Wrong room i know but everytime i go in the st room no theads or theve dissappeard
st200 gearbox it either jams in gear or total loss of gears
anyone experience this before i know a few run these in rst
i dont wanna get raped for a rebuild if its a cheap fix although nothing has been cheap since i bought the car
all ive found is this copyed from another forum no in the UK


early bolt tower & later tower lever

This mod can be had on any MTX75,which includes Contour/Cougar/Focus and Jaguar MTX75’s.
The reason for it is ‘loss of gears’ or ‘jammed in gear’.The early all shift towers have a bolt which holds the selector arm to the vertical shift shaft.Over time ,and harsh shifting,this bolt will fret and can break off its head resulting in total loss of gear selection or jammed in gear.The ally to can only be removed if the levers are in the neutral(vertical) position and not stuck in gear.If the tower is forced off when the trans is in gear it will bend the ‘fork keeper’ assy which will need replacement due to this damage and is not a part that can be had from Ford.The bolt head must also be removed from the trans as it will damage gears and can be punched ut thru the trans case!Some suggest lockwire on the bolt,this will only stop the head dropping down,it will not stop the bolt failure.The broken bolt can be replaced with the genuine Ford part but,as we have seen many times,can break again.
On the later Focus/Jaguar style towers,there is no bolt but the drive is by a roll pin.This redsign can still fail but no head will drop inside the trans but gears will still be lost.Another point on the later type,the selector arm is in 2 parts that are spot welded together.One part takes the roll pin,the other is the arm that selects the gears.We have seen some of these break at the spot welds…

All types of tower can be cured of this loss of gears issue with our key mod.
We machine a keyway in the vertical shift shaft and wire burn a matching keyway in the selector arm.The assy is rebuilt using a D3 steel key.This takes all the load from gear selection off of either the bolt,roll pin or spot welds so no failure or loss of gears can take place.
A very worthwhile mod on all MTX75..We also now offer this to ‘rod shift’ MTX’s as we hear that ‘some’ have also experienced a bolt failure.

Use Focus style tower as an upgrade?

Not any more
A few years ago this was the ‘common’ upgrade for the ally tower,along with new ‘ball type’ Focus cable ends.Note it does NOT stop the roll pin break or the spot weld failure AND can get you in trouble if you ever need to change the whole cable assy’s.The early type cables could take either the ‘pin’ type cable ends or the Focus ‘ball’ type.Ford no longer offer the early cables but only the later Cougar type as replacements.These WILL NOT accept the Focus ‘ball’ cable ends.So if you fit a Focus ‘ball’ type tower but need a whole set of cables in the future you will either need the ‘pin end’ type tower or an old used set of cables that will take Focus ball cable ends.This Focus tower mod is now ‘old hat’.

Cheers S