Plastic Autobox Selector bezel too high?

[alan_thomas]

Wondering if others have the same problem or have a solution.
The Selector gate bezel is so far above the selector lever, see yellow arrow in pic below, that at night all the light shines out which is very distracting and prevents you from seeing the selected position. In daytime the arrow is so far away from the letters on the Bezel it doesn't indicate which gear you are in.
I have already checked and the centre console and wood panel are as far down as they can go which only leaves the possibility of raising the gear stick.

Before I go and pull out the console, a job made much more difficult because my choke knob is the non removable type , does anyone know whether the height of selector mech can be adjusted or whether it can be packed up on spacers.

- Alan

DSC04933.jpg

[Jeff]

I'm sure I've seen this problem before Alan, sorry to say but have you done a search, for what it's worth?

[alan_thomas]

Did a search Jeff before original post but did not find anything, changed a couple of words and then got 10's of largely irrelevant results but only 'fix' was to fit a bit of draught excluder. Was looking for something a bit better by raising the Stick mech - Alan

[new to this]

You may not have to take the console out,just pull the gear selector wood out the way,then your be able to get to the auto selector ,try putting packing washers under the mech

Dave

[GRD]

I had a similar problem with mine. At some point the surround had been removed by a PO who managed to damage the mounting points and he had stuck it down to the wood with double-sided tape. After a while and especially when the sun shines on it the tape begins to break down allowing the plastic selector surround to move which exposes the bulb to shine in your eyes at night. I took mine off, cleaned it all up and re-attached it in the right place using silicone bathroom sealant (as I had some available and figured if it didn't work I would be no worse off. So far it seems to be working - 18 months down the line. I placed the plastic cover carefully and marked where it had to go then with the wood out of the car I could fix the cover in place using suitable weights to hold it in place while the silicone set.
Looking at your pic, the cover seems to be closer to the interior light switch than it should be, so would be worth checking.
You should be able to get it out without moving the console there was enough play in the plastic joining strip to ease the wood panels out.
Gordon

[Donkey]

Alan,
I had a similar problem and repositioned the surround to good effect.

Brian

[alan_thomas]

Hardly a major problem and this was about the 100th on my list of jobs to do on the Stag but I wanted a job where I could sit in the car in the sunshine without any physical effort but the end result has removed an annoyance felt whenever I took the car out at night.

Thanks for all the suggestions, Dave's (newtothis) suggestion that lifting the wood around the gearshift would mean that the console did not have to be removed was spot on. With the wood removed I could see the top of the shift mech was held on to the steel base by 4 pop rivets I drilled thru these and the top section lifted off, however the bottom of the shift mech also dropped away as it was held by the same pop rivets. I secured this back in place using new rivets of the same size.
stick1.jpg

I had already measured the gap and knew I needed to raise the top shift plate by about 3mm and found 5mm nuts were the perfect spacers. The only longer pop rivets I had were 4.8mm dia so I drilled the thread out of the 5mm nuts. Then drilled 4 new holes thru the top shifter plate then thru the steel underneath. remounted the top shift plate with the 5mm nuts lifting the top plate.
stick2.jpgstick3.jpgstick4.jpg

The end result is perfect, the plastic gate fits snugly over the top shifter plate and no light escapes, a bonus is the arrow now lines up with the correct marker.

I suppose I will now have to start the 'dirty under the car' job I was meant to do which is trying to find out what causes the loud screeching noise when accelerating around left hand corners. - Alan

[Jeff]

Great result.

[new to this]

Alun

Are you going with the original bulb,or changing over to LED ?

Dave

[alan_thomas]

Alun

Are you going with the original bulb,or changing over to LED ?

Dave

would like to use LED but I seem to remember that the light is wired in series with the cigarette lighter so it will require a bit of a thought - Alan

[mole42]

would like to use LED but I seem to remember that the light is wired in series with the cigarette lighter so it will require a bit of a thought - Alan

Correct! Mine is still the original light bulbs for that reason. I wanted to take the selector lamp out because I never look at it and it's bright in the dark, but if I take it out the cigarette lighter goes out too and that's where my USB socket is located so I need to see it sometimes.

[StagJonno]

What a strange arrangement. Can't see any reason for running these 2 lamps in series and would be easy enough to reconfigure for them both to be in parallel. May be that the bulbs fitted are 6V to achieve decent illumination.

Jonno

[alan_thomas]

What a strange arrangement. Can't see any reason for running these 2 lamps in series and would be easy enough to reconfigure for them both to be in parallel. May be that the bulbs fitted are 6V to achieve decent illumination.

Jonno

they are the normal 12v festoon bulbs I think it was their way of getting the very low brightness needed for these 2 lamp. You have to remember to fit the same wattage lamps in both though otherwise one is brighter and the other barely glows

[StagJonno]

Thanks Alan.

Still seems strange. The Cigar Lighter illumination on my MOD seems just about bright enough

[TR5convalescent]

Thank you for posting this, Alan. Huge help.