Shifter Knob

I've not seen a ton of early CJ5's, but I've never seen a white knob on one. Maybe ask Wyomike as he is the original owner of his '71 to see what came on his. He has already posted to this thread.

 

After all these years some things may be lost to history. I just know what I’ve seen in person and pics like I posted before. I guess oxidizing could be it but there does not appear to be any oxidation on the main shifter and the TC look very consistent on both the ‘58 CJ5 and ‘55 Wagon. If they were white and 60 + years, I could see cleaning and polishing right thru what’s left of the paint too down to the black substrate. But who knows.

 

On that ‘64 I parted out (post #15), I split one of the white knobs trying to remove it. It may have already had a crack due to rust expanding it. It had no brass thread insert, and was definitely white plastic all the way through; not painted.
I can’t say those white shift balls were original from the factory, but they looked like they were always on there.
-Donny

 

My 71 RII came with the single stick lever and it was made out of the new black plastic with no markings on it so it does not apply in this conversation. However I have owned 2 - CJ2s and my farther owned a 57 and a 61 CJ5 and all of them had black knobs. I can say in my 74 years I have never seen factory white ones. Not saying that Jeep never came from the factory that way, I have just never seen any white ones. IF some did come with factory ones it would be interesting to know what they were made of. All the early black ones I have seen were made of Bakelite I think and I do not remember ever seeing any kind of Bakelite items white in color, mostly black, but I do think there were a few other dark colors you could get, maybe they did have a white Bakelite. Most of the old distributor, rotors, etc. were made of black Bakelite. If you get to looking there were a lot of items on the old Jeeps like knobs, etc. that were made of Bakelite or some derivative . And all those are black. Would seem odd that they would make just one item white when all the other Bakelite parts were black.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Mike