Old Library

Miguel the perv &lt;&#103;instergtivr6&#64;nwbinders<img src=/i/dn.gif border=0 width=35 height=15>&gt; wrote:
>anyways, i am putting in a short shitter this weekend. anyone know how
>long this takes roughly? and on the bitch factor scale of 1 to 10, how
>much of a bitch is it?

It's a 3 or 4 on the bitch factor scale.   I did it Saturday.

It took me 3 1/2 hours with very little preparation.  I picked up
a tube of CV greese and made sure I had all the right wrenches and
sockets.  Make sure you have a good 6 sided 17mm socket for the exhaust
sleeve nuts. Loosening the bolts at the bottom of the header is a bit of a
pain, but then Todd supplies replacements so don't worry about hurting the
bolts if they're rusted.    A couple good 6 sided end wrenches and some
leverage and you'll be ok.

The supplied instructions are pretty complete, but there
are a couple things I did..  Hmm. You didn't say if this is
Todd's kit.  The tips below will still apply even if it's not.

I don't know what you plan to use to get under the car.  I have
some ramps and I just drove the front up on the ramps and that
was enough.    Getting the spoiler up the ramps is fun.   I need
some working pre-ramps.

I did not unplug the oxygen sensor from the cat.  I couldn't figure
out how, without unscrewing it.  Instead I just unclipped the wire
from the heat shield, which you have to do anyway and that gives
me a couple feet of wire so that I simply dropped the cat
and set it on the ground up forward under the engine with
the wire still attached.

One trick for getting the cat off is this.  Loosen both nuts
on the sleeve that connects cat to rest of exhaust pipe.  Make sure
you can move both ends a little.  Now tighten up the nut on
the cat side just a little, and shove the combined cat and sleeve as far
down the exhaust pipe as you can.  Then loosen the first nut and
tighten the one on the exhaust side, and twist and pull the cat off.
With both nuts loose the sleeve kept trying to follow the cat
and I couldn't get enough room to take it off.  Use the same trick
when you put it back on.  Slide cat into place, tighten cat side,
then attach cat to header, pull rest of exhaust forward into sleeve
until it's where it was before, tighten second nut.

I also didn't remove the rear heat shield.  I did spin the two
front fasteners off the rear heat shield so I could get the front
shield off, and then I simply flexed the rear shield down a bit and
used a socket to get to the bolts holding the shift box on.
That probably didn't save me a lot of time, but it's possible.
Oh, and a pair of sharp needlenose pliers will make quick work
of those weird fasteners.  (You'll see)

Last thing.  You can get the old shift mechanism out of the shift
box pretty easily, but getting the new one in can be quite
frustrating because the long solid ends of the cables get in
the way and get stuck on the top side of the mechanism when you
really want them on the bottom.  The instructions don't mention
this, but the easiest fix is to remove the bottom nut that mounts
the shift cables to the shift box, and loosen the top nut (towards
top of box) until the nut is at the end of the threads of the post
it sits on.   That'll give you plenty of room to move the cable
ends around and get the shifter mechanism in.   You could remove
both nuts and pull the cables out, but there's really no need.
Don't forget to put these nuts back on when you get everything
in the box, and make sure the plate they hold is straight and
snug.  It it were crooked, it would change the effective cable
lengths which is maybe why Todd doesn't mention loosening it,
but it's not hard to get right.  Basically if you have a hard
time getting the shift mechanism in the box, remember what I said
here.

I'm still evaluating the shifter.  It's tight, but loosening
up a little already.  I'm not sure if I like the feeling of 5th gear.
I've never missed it, and it goes in cleanly.  It is
just so close to 3rd that it makes me nervous and I don't
feel much spring pressure, even though I adjusted the spring position
bolt it so that it engages 3rd and 4th as far to the left as possible,
so that there'd be some spring pressure going right into 5th.  It feels ok
when I run through all the gears stopped, but when I'm driving 5th feels
like it's just barely on the right edge of 3rd.  Most people probably
probably wouldn't think to worry about going into 3rd accidentally
when 3rd takes them to 100mph.  ;)

>miguel

Which short shifter are you installing?  I posted the
following suggestion on installing the AWE model in
August, but I think it got lost in an AWE vs. Neuspeed
debate:

I just put an AWE shifter in.  I'm very happy with it,
but I did have one suggestion for the instructions
that I've been meaning to email Todd.  Loosen the two
13mm bolts on top of the shifter before dropping the
unit (see step nine at
http://www.supremepower.net/ergo.html).  The bolts in
my car were on really tight, and after a long period
of fighting with them while holding the shifter unit
in one hand while I lay in all sorts of positions
underneath the car, I finally had to bolt the stock
unit back into place just to get these two bolts
loose.  You shouldn't remove them early but do back
them off a quarter-turn or so when you still have
decent leverage.

After using it for six months, I'm still very happy
with the AWE shifter.  The only real problem I've had
was in getting the cables re-adjusted right.  The
dealer had played with mine several times shortly
after I bought the car to reduce the common
reverse-first problem, but I had to go back and do a
lot of readjustment once the the new shifter was in in
order to minimize the condition.

- -Jess Witt
http://www.peamail.com/gti