What exactly does the kick down lever do???

[doug glenn]

kickdown linkage

yep. he's right- needs a spring from front of slotted peice to where throttle spring is attached

 

[doug glenn]

kickdown linkage

o.k. looking at pictures again i see that slotted end is threaded onto rod. bolt must have been used because of no more adjustment or threads frozen in place(rust). put a spring on it to pull rod all the way foward, see if the the end will screw out enough to take up slack at 0 throttle. then hold throttle all way open & check to see if kickdown rod is all way back -or close to it- (you dont want kd. rod to limit throttle arm travel so a little play at wot is ok ). the threaded part on front of rod should now give a little adjustability in shift points. it takes alot of tinkering to get this right & probably have to modify linkage. on important thing is to disable carb squirter pump while you are "playing) with it, so you're not squirting lots of fuel into engine.on holley, remove squirter cam- on edelbrock i don't know.

 

[Red63440]

Both adjusting points were free of rust and adjusted easily but there is no more adjustment left. I will take the end into work tomorrow and tig in a 1/2" filler on the rear of the slot that will solve the problem. When moving the throttle at this point I get full movement except for the 1/2" on the kick down linkage. I will add a spring to the front of the kick down linkage as suggested. Does the spring just anchor in the slot or should there be a small hole drilled for it?

I just went down in the garage and found that when I disconnected the kick down linkage from the carb the rear of the slot came past the rear of the carb stud. I actually had to screw in the adjustments to get it back on the stud...so......it is good that way or what???

 

[MoparBill]

Here's how the spring goes. You said it was big block linkage, but is it RB linkage? B linkage is a little shorter on the vertical piece I believe.

 

[Red63440]

This is what I came up with..... the 383 engine looks like ****....

 

[doug glenn]

kickdown linkage

sorry red63440, i gave you wrong info on spring location. moparbill's picture is correct. i used later one peice rod on my 65 (all i had) that does'nt have that rear provision for the spring.i had to play around with diff. length trans. arms & slotted peices to get it right. in my opinion, adjust the rod so it pushes kd.( throttle pressure) arm as far back as far back as possible without limiting accelerator cable at wot. its designed to have little pressure at lite throttle, & max press. at wot. if you disconnect slotted peice & spring from carb, then push rod back by hand, you can feel the point where it begins to engage inside trans. this might give you a "feel" for how it's supposed to work

 

[Red63440]

Doug, the above two phots are of my engine (hate to admit it), the spring was attached 2 hours before Bill posted his photo. I will play with the linkage to get the max pressure at WOT even if it means a modification.:book1:

 

[MoparBill]

It might be a difference between years, but your rod from the carb to bellcrank looks different than mine.

 

[Red63440]

Mine is on a 383, what is yours on?

 

[kursplat]

This is what I came up with....

look at how MoparBill's spring is connected. the rod gets spun around 180' and the end of the spring goes into the hole where your's has a cotter pin. just like with a throttle spring, you don't want it too strong or it will wear the throttle bores

 

[MoparBill]

I sent you the adjustment section from the factory service manual, it's a 68 manual but should be the same adjustment procedure. Let me know if you need anything else from the book.....