Date: 12/11/00
Well, I read as much info as I could on this shifter. I kind of expected that dropping the exhaust and "knocking the pin" out of the old shifter would be the worst of it. I guess I expected about 3 hours (once I got the exhaust dropped).
Me? I'm a fifty year old computer programmer who races expert motocross (www.snowdirt.com). I have been around machines all my life, rebuilt some 283 Chevys when I was a teenager and regularly pull my dirt bikes apart. I do everything except split the cases. But, pistons, rings, jetting, swingarm bearings, etc. is done by me (and its never ending, of course, when you race dirt bikes). So I consider myself more than a backyard, tuneup guy.
Anyway it went like this =====> (( Me, myself and I doing the WHOLE job.))
1. Jacking up this car is a big pain in the ass. I rolled the front up onto ramps. Put a block of wood behind each wheel and bolted the wood to the ramp (just to be sure!). With two hydraulic ramps I jacked (at the jackpoints) the rear of the car as high as the jacks would take it. Rear wheels about 1 inch off the ground. Put 2 jackstands in place of the jacks. Chocked the wheel rears too. Keep in mind that I am new to Vettes!
2. So under I go to drop the stock exhaust. Right front cake. Left front a frozen 3 bolt scary twist.. WD40 all over the place. Thought for sure they were gonna snap. Top bolt was a pain with my tools. Fortunately it was the least corroded. Slowly I discover that it won't drop so I drop more and more gear until I realize the whole thing has to come down or else it won't come off the right "cat". So off I go unbolting muffler clamps and the 4 springs in the midsection. Still won't come off. Son, of a bitch. Now I'm tugging and kicking until I realize that I got to twist the whole unit counter clockwise to get it off. Off it comes and lands on the pile of encyclopedia's as I had planned. No damage. But I am a mess. My back is raw from the ground, WD40 has got my hands black and my clothes are a mess. Time to climb inside the "pretty vette" now......
3. Removing the stock shifter: (what they didn't tell
you in the directions)
** You have to use vice grips to get the "wedge" out of the shifter knob.
Put a screwdriver in the grips and pound upward with a hammer and it will come right
out. Forget the needle nose pliers the directions tell you to use. Its
hopeless.
** When you go under the car to knock the pin out of the shifter shaft remember to clean
the boot first so you stay halfway clean. Then clip the boot with vice grips gently
and tie the vice grips to something so the shift shaft is constantly exposed. This
helps a LOT.
** You have to put the shifter in 3rd gear (or neutral I believe) to see the shift
pin. If you have it in 4th it stays hidden.
** When the retaining ring pops off it seems to disappear. First I thought it
flew to parts unknown. Then I was convinced it went inside the $4,000 tranny.
By moving the shifter back and forth it finally rode out on the shift shaft. I
thought I had found god when I realized I didn't have to take apart my transmission!!!!
** I had to use a sledge hammer on the drift to knock the pin out. It was really
hard to hold it in place and pounding on that $4,000 transmission makes you very nervous.
This was a tough job under that car. Real bad especially when using a 6 inch
drift. I fashioned others with a grinder but they bent. Finally you get smart and
start the pounding with a giant drift. Then once it moves you can use one that fits
entirely inside the hole to finish the job.
** Now the pin got driven out and disappeared! So, at this time I had a lost
retaining ring AND a lost pin. I was ready to kill someone. Low and behold the
pin stayed attached to the shift shaft and came out with the shifter. The retaining
ring finally revealed itself a few moments later. I calmed down. I did not
ruin my tranny after all.
4. Preparing the new shifter:
** I used a grinder to detach the old shifter from the shift shaft.
** Then, surprise, surprise. Where the old shifter connected with a plain, faced,
lubed surface, you have to connect to the new shifter with a
"6 mm roll pin". Weird? The shift shaft is like a miniature drive
shaft. EXACT LOOK ALIKES. And the directions say to attach the new shifter by
driving a PRESS FIT pin into the bearing surfaces???? How could this be?
Directions are clear though and I guess they knew movement would not be restricted by
doing this. I am to find out later that this pin will restrict
the lateral operation of the shifter (when in neutral). By design? By
mistaken economy? I can't figure it out.
** On top of that the main pin (at the bottom of the shifter called "lower
bushing") that is going to accept the shift shaft and the "roll pin" has an awfully loose fit. Much looser than the old shifter.
Its supposed to accept 0-rings though. Even weirder there are 4 o-rings. You
would expect them to seal the 2 "tines" of the fork at the bottom of the shifter
with some grease inbetween. . But when you insert the part the two inner seals pass
through the tines and hang in no man's land between the two tines. So what about a
grease seal? Forget that. Are these teflon rings means to ease
friction? If that's the case why do two hang inside the tines doing nothing? I suspect this part is machined incorrectly and that all four seals should
perform some function. Probably "two to a tine" (with grease held between
the seals). THAT would make sense. Something is wrong here.
** ok, so you pound the piss out of the "roll pin"
to get this whole questionable setup to attach to the bottom of the shift arm. High
friction roll pin, with a loose lower bearing, and two seals adrift in no man's land.
Oh, this put me in a good mood! I wanted to modify it right then and there
but I need this car sometime this year and figured it would at least hold up for a few
years.
5. Installing the new shifter:
** Slips in ok. But remember that the notch on the shifter must face rearward!
Don't screw this up. Be careful because there is a lot of work ahead of you.
** My shifter would not slip into the shift box without
grinding down the brass bearings a bit. Remember not to lose
your shims and to utilize them to take up all slack around then nylon bushings.
** Get under the car and repin the shift shaft to the tranny. Start pounding with
the sledge again. Only it goes in fairly easy. But when it seats it takes a few good
pound to make it flush. Then slide the clip back over the pin. Its tight and
nerve racking but it does clip on by some miracle. Again, things are very, very
tight down there so your nerves are rattled doing this. And, oh, that $4,000 tranny!
Don't snap off shift shaft!
** Now install the reverse lockout. But, I ponder, and wonder, how the hell is this
going to work? I mean, I am really perplexed. So
you find out the it does NOT have a reverse lockout.
Its got a tensioner that rubs against the side making it harder to go in reverse (cause
you have to compress an additional spring to do it). But that's it. There is
no reverse lockout!
** So now you adjust everything correctly (the reverse "lockout") and check
everything is smooth. That's when you feel the tension when slapping the shifter
left/right when its in neutral that there is drag caused by that "roll pin" on
the "lower bushing". Its very noticeable cause it has to override the drag
of that pin. In fact there is so much drag that if you
put the shifter into the 5/6 gate it won't return to neutral (the 3/4 gate) when you let
go! This seems really poor to me. The shifter
would be more responsive with a bearing on the u-joint on
the shift shaft rather than a press fit pin that has to be forcefully overridden each
time you roll the shifter between gates. Again, does not impact forward/backward
movement. Just causes resistance on the left/right shifter movement. Ie; "roll
pin".
** Put the inner boot on. It would not seat on the left side for me. No way,
now how. I finally decided to cut one of the interior plastic struts out of the way
on the left side of the shifter. This is a big chunk of plastic that is about 1 inch
wide and 14 inches long but it was impossible to seat the boot (and completely impossible
to tell if it was seated or not) without this mod. So, I got the drill out and cut
it out. The boot went on easily now and I could tell it was seated. This
modification does not show once everything is put back together. And who needs road
noise and carbon monoxide entering the car? I wanted that boot SEATED.
** The rest is uneventful (except that the red zip tie for the under car boot is too small
to get on without going mad). Use your own.
6. Install the exhaust system: Again, this was a tough job alone.
It really beats you up. But has nothing to do with the shifter, of course,
but it is a lot of "overhead" should you have to do this job again.
Ok, so how long did it take?
I started jacking the car up on noon on Saturday. Worked till midnight.
Started again at noon on Sunday. Finished by 5 pm. Car was idling in
the driveway.
About 14 hours of labor. Plan on the whole weekend to do this job. And
if this is your only transportation I would make sure you have another way to get to work
in case something goes wrong. There is a lot of "potential" here.
And a lot of time is wasted doing it alone. You waste a lot of time trying not
to grease up the interior or beat the life out of the leather driver's seat. Hard
to do when you are alone and full of grease (as you alternate between jobs).
You just waste a lot of time being careful with the interior.
So, I take it out for a spin .........
Its really different. Much different than I anticipated. The shift is incredibly tight and short.
This is amplified by the fact that the whole shifter is much shorter now. Even the
boot is crunched up against the shift knob. You really have to muscle the shifter
now and its quite noisey. Its feels more like a wall switch than a shifter. I
mean, its just clack, clack, clack (and your arm hardly moves). After the first 10
miles the noise was annoying me, the arm pressure annoying and the leather threads on the
stock shift knob was irritating the skin on my hand. I went to bed depressed.
Next day I took it into work (35 miles). Halfway in I was smiling. You have to
get use to the shifter. It takes a lot of muscle but it really begins to feel good
to shift. Clack, clack, clack. Clack into 6th at 120 and yeah this is great!
Shifts are really quick, you get used to the "clacking" from this stub of
a shifter. You also get a "liking" to strong arming the shifter all the
time. Big bonus: more cornering control. I find that I can hang onto the
shifter when cornering and shifting (a must if you want to keep revs constantly over 4
grand). It really stabilizes you in the cockpit. I find I drive the car
much more aggressively now. It feels very exotic, very
unique, uncompromising. I am pleased with the final
result.
But I let my son and daughter drive this car too and there is no reverse lockout.
Even I find myself in the reverse gate sometimes. Its really easy to do. But
I tested it at low speeds and the tranny seems to lock you out of reverse automatically
once you are rolling. Does anyone know how the ZF
tranny does that????? Can I rely on this? Or do I have to create my own reverse lockout mechanism to be safe?
So, I am pleased and impressed. I am also a little
disappointed over the stiffness in the shifter (in left/right movements) do to the press
fitted "roll pin" instead of a bearing at the base of the shifter. And it
still won't return to neutral if I let go of the shifter in the 5/6 gate. But I can
live with this. The other stuff (washers in no-mans land on the "lower
bushing"), well I lubed the hell out of it and I'm certain it will take years, if
ever, to develop a lot of slack. Its just the thought of ever doing this job again
put shivers down my back. I'd rather pop the engine out of my motorcycle any day!
Justin
The B&M Assembly Diagram
