tech0937

I recently found out what was causing the annoying vibration and the ugly slop in my shifter.

Some of you know what I'm talking about, the left to right movement when you're in gear. The slop was even more ridiculous in neutral. It wasn't tight and solid like it was supposed to be, how it used to be.

As for the vibration... That drove me insane. It was constant on the highway and sporadic while driving around town. It would only shut up when I grabbed it firmly. It did it when I let off the gas and it did it when I stepped on the gas. Eventually got use to it, took me a few years to finally fix it .... Procrastination does that. And the fact that I couldn't believe that my skunk 2 short shifter was the cause. I tried replacing the stabilizer bushings with energy suspension ones and the slop was still there. Vibration never went away. Tightened bolts and still sloppy...vibration went away temporarily but always came back.

So I finally decided to fix it once and for all.

Once I was underneath the car, I inspected the short shifter itself while someone in the car moved the shifter back and forth at the point of the slop and not pass the slop. From the top the slop was very pronounced. But from the bottom there was very very slight movement, this occurred where the skunk 2 shifter bearings and the bolt that attaches the shifter to the linkage was. There was slight play in the skunk 2 shifter bearings. I mean very slight. Looked normal.

Impressions of Mfactory:

So I finally broke down and decided to buy an Mfactory short shifter along with their stabilizer busing kit. The stabilizer bushing kit was a very tight fit especially the one that attaches to the transmission. Very solid piece. Very different from the energy suspension ones. Even came with a new dust shield that goes around the ball of the shifter.

As for the shifter, It's supposed to be made of carbon steel, which is supposedly not as prone to vibrations. Holding it in my hands it is much heavier and feels a lot more heavy duty than the skunk one which is made from aluminum I believe. Holding them side by side you can see from the ball down they were pretty much the same length, so I expect the throw to be the same. Slightly different angles up top from the ball up, but you probably won't be able to tell any difference once it's in the car. It uses similar or what looks like the same bearings as the skunk 2 one does. No hardware other than 2 brass washers, which wasn't enough to cover the gap in the linkage and shifter. I had to reuse the spacer that came with my skunk shifter. Mfactory lost points for that =P.

Once the linkage and shifter was off the car the play in the bearings was more pronounced. You could tell that the side to side play was right where the bearings were, where the bolt slide through the shifter. Never thought these would go bad after a few years. Either buy new shifter bearingss from skunk or get a new shifter. As for the energy suspension bushings... Parts of them were starting to crumble, I've had those in probably about 3-4 years. Never thought those would go bad. I'll probably won't use their product again. Weird...The ones in a friends car was in for about 7 years and his still look good.

New linkage and stabilizer bushings went in with out a problem. The transmission side stabilizer bushing was harder to put on then the energy suspension ones. Nice tight fit.

Now I have NO slop in the shifter, and NO MORE VIBRATION!!! It's amazing how such a small thing can change how much you enjoy driving your car. It's strange how I still listen for that rattle from the shifter.... My mind is still getting use to the quiet. Everything shifts smooth as before without the slop. Now on to the squeeks in the back of the car....coming from the trunk.

AcuraLsSE

Interesting... I'm having the same problem with my Fidanza short shifter. I just bought some OEM bushings but I haven't installed them yet (waiting for the engine to come back from the machine shop) If they don't fix it I'll look into the shifter itself.

MFactory

There isn't too much difference between the various high quality shifters out there (point noted about the spacers though, that is something we will change with the next batch ).

The main reason for the performance difference is with our solid shifter bushes. We spent countless hours on the track, revising the durometer of our bushes until we found the perfect compromise between performance/comfort.

I'm glad you are now enjoying the fruits of our efforts

tech0937

Thanks Mfactory. Car shifts very nice. High quality product!

PatrickGSR94

iTrader: (1)

interesting.

I've had a $40 aluminum AutoZone short shifter in my car for nearly TEN YEARS and not a single vibration, no slop whatsoever.

The issue is the width of the throat on the shift linkage vs. the width of the bottom of the shifter itself, where the bearings are. You HAVE to take up ALL the room on that through bolt or the shifter WILL vibrate.

Now my shifter only came with 2 small spacers, which I placed on each side up against the bearings in the shifter. The rest of the space on the through bolt was taken up with washers, and a lock washer inserted on each side of the shifter to act as a "spring" to keep the other washers pressed together. This prevents any vibration or noise.

IMHO Skunk2 shifters are nice (I'm pretty sure they're steel also) and I'm sure the MFactory ones are nice, too, but really if you're smart about how you install stuff, even "lower end" parts can work great and last a REALLY long time.

*edit* oh and I definitely agree with you on the ES shifter bushings. Pure crap. This is how mine looked after about 4 years or so. So much play it was ridiculous. Replaced with new OEM rubber bushings, and shifting felt 100x better.

cbaber

Thats interesting about the ES bushings. I bought a B&M short shifter for my GSR and the ES bushing kit. The shifter came with a spacer to fill the gap at the bottom where the shifter hooks to the linkage, but it wasnt big enough! I eventually found parts to make my own spacer that correctly fills the gap. It works fine now, with no vibration and its extremely firm feeling which I like.

On the other car I have some cheap ebay shifter with no ES bushings. That thing feels like heaven in my hand! I dont know if its because its Del Sol and my other car is a teg, but the shifter in the del sol feels at least 2x better IMO. And its been on the car for 2 years without any problems to speak of.

PatrickGSR94

iTrader: (1)

On the B&M did you have to reuse the parts out of the bottom of the stock shifter? I think shifters that employ metal bearings (Skunk2, MFactory, my AZ shifter, etc) instead of the stock junk are superior, because when you have the proper spacers up against those bearings, you can tighten the through bolt as much as you want and it will not affect the movement of the shifter. On stock shifters and others that reuse the stock pieces out of the bottom, it's very easy to tighten the through bolt too much and cause the shifter to bind.

cbaber

It was suppose to include a metal bearing but I ended up reusing the stock one. The included bearing was designed to work with the included spacer, and as I mentioned it was too small. I had to use the stock one so that I could use my ghetto spacer. It was just easier this way.

PatrickGSR94

iTrader: (1)

Spacer was too small in what way? Too small to fit over the bolt, or too thin? The spacers that came with my AZ shifter were too thin to take up all the space on the through bolt, but I still placed them on each side of the shifter bearings, and then used flat washers and a lock washer on each side to take up the rest of the room on the bolt.

cbaber

Too thin to fill up the space. It left probably a little gap and would have caused me to bend the linkage tabs if I would have tightened it down.

PatrickGSR94

iTrader: (1)

I see. Washers could have easily fixed that.

tech0937

Agreed on the energy suspension bushings...I have a few of their suspension bushings on my car, I'll probably be taking a look at them soon.

The skunk 2 short shifter was a great shifter while the bushings on it was still good. This is probably the 1st one that went bad ever....All of my friends run the skunk shifters and non have problems and some of them had it on longer.

And yeah you're right about the space on the through bolt, It has to be filled up for it to be no vibration. Which mine was but the bushings went bad causing it to have play. Not side to side play. The bushings weren't sliding back and forth on the bolt,There was no space for it to do that. It kind of pivoted on itself with the bolt in...does that make any sense?

How long were your bushings in before they looked like that. Mine just started to crumble all over the place...

PatrickGSR94

iTrader: (1)

My shifter bushings looked like that after about 4 years or so. They looked MUCH worse than the original OE rubber bushings that were about 8 years old when I put the ES ones in.