Shifter adjustment instructions Options

[Dr Evil]

From my 31 pages of notes that I have been emailing a lot of copies of lately because I cant seem to post them here in PDF format.

Adjusting your shifter

Concept:
Before you can easily adjust your shifter you need to conceptualize what is happening. I can only do so well with words and diagrams, but once you get the concept you will be surprised how easy it is to adjust the shifter perfectly in a very short amount of time.

For this explanation, reference figures 2, 3, and 4 below. Figure 2 is the
conceptual depiction of how the shifter should be when aligned correctly. The black
outline is where you would like the shift pattern to be, and is where the stick-shift
actually can travel. The red lines represent where the shift pattern actually is. Stay with me, and make sure you get this concept.

Now a common issue is that people end up with only some gears, but not all.
Refer to figure 3. You will notice that the red lines are to the right and up from the
desired location of the shifter. In this setup you would only be able to select 1st and 3rd gears, but 1st would be near where 3rd should be and 3rd would be near where 5th should be. About now I hope you are having that “ah ha!” moment.

Adjustment:

1. Select a gear. In using figure 3 it would be wisest to select 3rd. You can determine that it is 3rd that you are selecting because there will be no gears past the middle (1st) and 3rd is the next over on the bottom. Also, you would have no upper gears.

2. Loosen the pinch bolt under the stick shift

3. Stabilize the shift rod in the tunnel so it doesn’t move, this way you are only
moving the stick-shift and not the rod, thus not changing the fact that the gear box
is in third.

4. Move the shifter to where 3rd should be. Second and 3rd are the only gears to use as they lie on the plane of the spring plate and you can use the shifters spring plate to guide you to where 2 and 3 should be.

5. Tighten pinch bolt and see if you can get all gears. The short answer is, put transmission into known 2nd or 3rd gear, then move the stick to where that gear is supposed to be. Now use this concept on Figure 4. In figure 4 you would only have gears 1, 3, and 5 as R, 2, 4 would be out of reach of your current adjustment. To fix this scenario you would follow the same steps as stated above.
I hope this clarifies this simple procedure. It is a bit more difficult to explain in prose.

Fig 2


Fig 3


Fig 4

[stugray]

Another trick I learned after doing this about a hundered times:

Put a dab of white paint (I use good ole white out) on the joint where you make adjustments.
Then put a pen mark on the white paint to register the position of the shaft (both in/out & twist) before you start making adjustments.

One of the hardest parts is: as you are messing with it, guaranteed you will go "Wait did that just move? Which way did it move?"

With the starting marks you can tell which way you are going.

By using the white out, you can just knock it all off with a wire brush and start again with new marks.

[HalfMoon]

Another trick I learned after doing this about a hundered times:

Put a dab of white paint (I use good ole white out) on the joint where you make adjustments.
Then put a pen mark on the white paint to register the position of the shaft (both in/out & twist) before you start making adjustments.

One of the hardest parts is: as you are messing with it, guaranteed you will go "Wait did that just move? Which way did it move?"

With the starting marks you can tell which way you are going.

By using the white out, you can just knock it all off with a wire brush and start again with new marks.

YES! This simple little piece of advice helped enormously the other day when I was making adjustments to regain my high gears.