cheap tricks to tighten up your shifter

[bbeacock@rogers.com (Ben Beacock)]

Right now I'm fighting with my friends car that is too tight (won't come
out of gear easily). It seems to be partially a clutch problem, since I
put a new disc in for him when I changed the engine, but I had to
re-pull the tranny and change the pressure plate, flywheel and the
pushrod(worn about 1mm).  That helped since it wouldn't come out of gear
with the car running before.  I've replaced all of the shifter bushings
and the shifter ball but I have a feeling something may be wrong with
the tranny. 

Anyways, for my cheapass shifter stuff:
I've done Tip#1 with the electrical tape many times but I find that most
of the time this piece has worn grooves from the bushing.  I take the
piece out, clean it and braze around both rotating areas.  Then I
roughly grind it down (lathe would be mint here) then hand sand it round
till the surface is slightly bigger than normal.  

Tip #3..  I use electrical tape here again.

Tip #5..  I actually have a weighted shift rod from an A3 hose clamped
to mine since the A3 rod is too short.

Ben


-----Original Message-----
From: scirocco-l-admin@scirocco.org
[mailto:scirocco-l-admin@scirocco.org] On Behalf Of T. Reed
Sent: August 16, 2002 5:35 AM
To: scirocco-l@scirocco.org
Subject: cheap tricks to tighten up your shifter

Warning: if you are not a cheap bastard, stop reading this right now!
you
will laugh at how cheap and stupid I am.

...

After spending an alarming amount of cash on all new shift bushings,
linkage rods, bearings, ball assemblies and levers, I still had an
annoying amount of side-to-side and front-to-back play in my shifter -
something like 3/4" in every direction. With a little inspection I
discovered this was because the metal parts in my shift linkage were
worn
out and the circular holes in the linkage had become oval-shaped.

Now, being the cheapass that I am .. I don't want to go order a bunch of
new $87 metal lever arms and relay bars and whatnot from the stealer. So
instead, I rigged up the following solutions:

TIP #1 - This tip is the easiest and has to do with the relay arm that
is
shaped like an upside down L and has the rubber-drumstick-ball attached
to
the bottom of it. On my car, I could grab this arm and shake it even
with
brand new bushings and it would jostle around. I even tried the solid
plastic bushings from the A3 linkage but they didn't help I took the
relay
arm out and pinched the bottom bushing with my fingers and shook it. It
was
moving around in the hole. So I took it out, wrapped electrical tape
around the outside 4 times and pushed it back in place. It took a bit of
effort to get it to snap in because it was such a tight fit... but the
electrical tape isn't at a wear point so it will last for some time.
Now,
when I grab the arm and shake it, the whole car moves and the arm
doesn't!

TIP #2 - This tip is what many would describe as "ghetto", but it worked
perfectly for me. The rubber-drumstick-ball that I was referring to had
worn away at the "cage" surrounding it, introducing play to the system
of
levers. So my options were to either enlarge the ball, shrink the cage,
or
shim the cage somehow. I chose the last one because it was the easiest.
I
cut the top and bottom off of a pop can with some tin snips, made one
cut
from top to bottom then folded the remaining rectangle of aluminum in
half
several times to make a ~2mm thick pad (I rolled the sharp edges under,
too). I made the width a little over twice that of the cage. Then I
slipped this nasty contraption between the ball and the cage, centered
the excess and folded the sides around the back of the cage, creasing
the
metal. Then I 'hooked' the two ends together so the pad won't come off.
Yes, it used to be a pop can and now it's part of my shift linkage.. but
now a lot of my front-to-back play is gone. I don't know if the aluminum
will wear through but I'm hoping it won't since I greased the ball up
real
nice.

TIP #3 - The L-shaped pivot thingy for the plastic ended relay rods. A
major source of side-to-side play and a major pain in the neck, this
piece
was the #1 trouble spot in my linkage. I had already clamped the whole
contraption in a vice while it was on the car to try and bend the
bracket
that holds it to hold it more snugly. That helped a little, but the real
problem was the bottom hole in the bracket which was out of round. Now,
I
had lots of options here: I could drill it out and use a larger bolt..
(more difficult than it sounds - the bolt is special), I could drill it
out and use a sleeve bushing, I could weld the hole shut, grind the
weld flat and drill it again. Instead, I chose to file the out of round
spot a little, and wrap stainless steel tie wire through the hole
several
times to effectively shrink the hole. I had to use a dremel tool to make
'channels' for the wire to sit in so that the bracket would still be
flush
with the pivoting arm, but the wire wrapping worked very good. I was
able
to shim the hole down to just the right size for the bolt. Now, of the
tips here.. this one will cause the most wear (on the bolt). But the
other
options for this trouble spot were more work, and I'm not only cheap..
I'm
lazy.

TIP #4 - I bought a brand new shift lever and bearing assembly (the
lever
that you actually hold on to in the car) with the hope that it would fix
the play that the old one had. Nope, even though it was brand new the
play
was still there. So what did I do about it? I took the shift boot off so
I could see the outer piece of the bearing, the inner round piece of the
bearing and the splined sleeve in the very middle. Then I went and got
a selection of small finishing nails and sat there placing them in the
crack between the inner bearing and the splined sleeve until I found the
perfect two nails (one for front to back and one for side-to-side) that
eliminated the play. I was actually just fooling around at the time.. I
didn't intend to leave the nails in. But the improvement was so good I
said "screw it" and left them in. They haven't fallen out yet, but in a
year or two I might have to switch to bigger nails if they wear a groove
in the plastic (I don't think they will, though.. there's no movement
where they are.. just force/pressure)

TIP #5 - Make your own weighted shift rod. You should have done this a
long time ago if you haven't already. Just buy a bunch of lead fishing
weights, make a mold out of a couple 2x4s nailed together and notched
for
the rod, melt the lead with a propane torch and pour it in to the mold.
Easy as changing your oil and it helps a lot. In case you couldn't tell
I
didn't come up with this one.

I have about 1/4" of side-to-side play and 1/8" of front-to-back play
now while out of gear. And I know where that little bit is coming from
(the junction between the in-the-car shift lever and the long relay rod)
and I intend to fix it in the next few days. Nobody cares, though.. so
unless somebody asks I won't bother describing how I end up fixing it.

So, if you're still with me, you're probably thinking "this guy is an
idiot". And you're right.. but at least my car shifts 500% better than
it
did a few days ago. It's almost like having the tranny right under the
gear shift (i.e. no linkage at all).

I think I'm the only one who'd be crazy enough to do this kind of stuff
to
their car. Anyone want to disagree?

-Toby


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