Alright, alright, alright... I got under the truck this weekend and swapped out the shifter linkage. It took some finagling to get it on there. I had to end up pulling the mounting bracket off the frame, not once, but twice!
To begin with, it took me a while to figure out I needed to pull the mounting bracket off of the truck to make everything fit. I tried my best to get it on there "the easy way", hoping it would just slide into place. Nope, not enough clearance. I removed everything, got the new one mounted. Bolted up the bracket to the frame, then realized I left the nut off of the transmission stud that holds the linkage on.
So, I had to take everything back apart, put the nut on, then re-assemble everything again. All in all, I spent about 1.5 hrs on a 20 minute project for most of you.
But, it's on. Now I just hope that I have it in the correct position! I really don't want to have to take it apart again to flip the linkage around. I did run the column shifter through the gears, and it seemed to work. I just hope I'm in the correct gear. HA!
I attached a couple of crappy pictures looking down from above the engine.