I'm not trying to talk you completely out of cables, but if you want to do it, you need to get it done right. You say the guy you were tanking to was talking push pulls at about twice teh cost of teh jeggs jobs, in other words, he was building teh same thing, just custom... Here's a hint If you were really looking at someting stout enough to handle a truck transmission, you would be looking in the $300 or so range...each I looked into this heavily and a figure of around $385 ea sticks in my head for something stout enough to not begin compressing in a very short time. Indistrial cables have 2 ratings on them one for pull and a separate for push which is much less
If youve ever tried to push one of those shift rods back into the tranny you know that they wont go back without a sharp rap from a rather large hammer. It takes a lot of leverage to overcome those springs. THey are there to keep the things from popping out of gear when going over rough roads
When I made the shift rods up I had the factory straight shift rods to start with that were solid bar and I extended them by sleeving them with tubing and that also allowed me to make final adjustments. I used long lengths of wire to rough in the bends same as roughing in an exhaust system
Set a clevis on each end to attach it ( make sure to set teh threaded end for adjustments for both at teh front where you can get to them, unlike I did
I goofed and put one of my adjusters at the rear by mistake, makes it a pain to adjust the rod on that one.
I had the truck right there next to the bender so i could fine tune the bends. It was an adventure because not only do you have to route the tubing, but you also have to line the bends and runs to where when it pushes and pulls , it does so in a straight line
figuratively speaking.( whatevers is in between, the ends have to line up or it won't push and pull evenly . that puts a crimp in it
) If you can't find my old posts with the pictures of that mess, I can take some more for you