What I needed to do was pull the gear lever back just a hair, so that I could get it into that 5th position, actually if you squint just right at the photo above, you can see that it's sitting slightly forward (it's in the neutral position). It wasn't fouling on the (square) hole in the metal mounting plate, it was hitting the end of travel on the (circular) ball joint bushing. What was happening when you went for 5th is that you'd move over to the right just fine, and then as you pushed up the lever would sorta slide to the left on you. In the photo above, you can see the shift lever without the center console in the way. Oddly enough, 6th works just great.Īfter filing the hole in the mounting plate a bit wider so that the lever didn't interfere on the mounting plate when pushed right, and loosing and tightening the bracket in the rear 5 or 6 times, and driving around the block after each change only to find the problem still there, I finally found a solution: Well, sometimes you can, but usually you can't. Reverse works fine now, great, but I discovered during the test drive that you can't get into 5th any more. So, I took the air filter off, loosened the bracket up, conned my wife to test shift for me, then tightened it all up again. With that, I took the car out for a quick spin just to make sure everything was working right, only to find I couldn't get into reverse! I suspect that the bracket at the back of the car, which now has a little bit of wiggle room when the bolts are loose, shifted a bit on me. While I had the center console out, I also re-installed the fake-leather armrest thing, you need to bend the tabs in from under the center console to get than damn thing to stay in place and I've been too lazy to bother since it came off on me while someone else was codriving the car at a rallycross. The shift lever is much more comfortable now, it doesn't interfere of the shift cable when shifting into reverse, and as an unexpected bonus there's a ring/ledge thing around the top of the lever which holds the shift boot up. I considered greasing them up with vasoline (it'd probably work), but finally gave in and ventured out into the plague infested countryside to get some grease. I'm not sure how that happened, but apparently I haven't done any work requiring any grease up to this point.
So, I pulled apart the center console and disassembled the shift lever only to look at it and realize I really needed to grease the ball joints, and of course I don't have any grease in the garage. The new shift lever comes out of a later model 93+ MR2, which apparently fits right in but is shorter, which means reverse shouldn't (hopefully) interfere anymore.
That said, the janky short shifter also causes the fabric to be caught between the shift cable and the center consol, and ripped my artful sewing. The sewing job on it leaves a lot to be desired, but it's mostly holding together. The car came without a shift boot, so I make the one on the car long ago out of some flannel.
The result used to be that the knob was a little too high, but now with the 6 speed in there I'm also having trouble getting into reverse because the short shifter is interfering with one of the shift cables. The AW11 came with a shift lever meant to be held like a pistol grip, and the PO then installed a janky short shifter, and a ball knob on top. Should be easy, but being me I figured out a way to mess things up. The game plan for the weekend is to replace the shift lever in the car, and to tackle the brake proportioning valve.
Actually, I'm starting to run out of parts, so soon there won't be much left for me to do on the car other than wait for extremely delayed shipments, and wish I could take it out to get it dirty. This weekend it's time to get back to work on the MR2.