How to Install a Short Throw Shifter

Hey guys Chrisfix, here and today I will show you how to

install

a

short

throw

shifter

on your car. In this case, we'll be working on my 1998 Mustang GT on the drifts, but this process will be similar, if not identical, for the most part. makes and models, so after watching this video you will be able to replace your original

shifter

with an upgraded

short

throw

shifter. Now I ended up buying a Steeda short throw shifter from Elimar. It came highly recommended to me from a group of Mustang owners, so I'm excited to

install

this on the drift Stang.

If you want your own short throw shifter, I'll leave a link in the description where you can get one and very quickly for those of you who don't know a short throw shifter. It does exactly what it says: it shortens the shift throw so you don't have to move the shift knob as much to put it in each gear and the way it works is surprisingly simple, so here's the original Mustang shifter, you can see the pivot. The point is there now, if we look at the aftermarket short throw shifter, the pivot point moves up, so by moving the pivot point up, the shifts are much shorter, so So a really simplified way to show you how it works is to simulate the shifter. it's this piece of wood right here where my hand is is the pivot point up there is where you grab the shifter that's where the shifter knob would be and then down here where it hits the side of the house is where the shifter knob would be shifter clicks into gear then on a stock shifter the pivot point is down so there is a big throw to shift it into gear, now a short throw shifter moves that point pivot up and there's a much shorter throw to get it going and that's basically how it works.

It's that simple now, there are three reasons why I'm upgrading to a short throw shifter first. I want to give you an idea of ​​the original route, so watch me go through the gears and past the gears. I really mean sudden changes. This thing is like rowing a boat and long casts not only reduce acceleration but also keep your hand on the gear shift for a longer period of time instead of on the steering wheel and while driving and practicing any type of motor sport, such as drifting, that you want. Try to keep your hands on the wheel as much as possible to maintain control of the car in addition to the long travel of the shift lever.

The second problem is that my shifter is very clumsy. Trying to find gears can be a challenge, especially when you skip a gear on purpose like If you're braking hard and downshifting and I'm not sure if you realize it, but the spring in my stock shifter doesn't exist, it's supposed to. the shifters jump towards the middle when in neutral, which helps you find the next gear, especially when we're going from second to third gear and finally, since this is the drifting thing, I'm excited to show you my new ASD hydraulic brake, for which I will do an installation video, so stay tuned, but for now this is the area I want to install it, the only problem is that the first and second gear shift lever is very close to the Hydrati brake so I'm hoping with a short throw shifter it stays tighter here and there's more room for the e-brake now before I install the new shifter I want to take a measurement on the old shifter to see what That's how long the travel is, so I'm going to put it in first gear, measure it from the front of the shift knob and shift it from first to second and that's about four and a half inches of reach, which is a lot for a sports car. , so now that we have the throw distance for the stock shifter, let's install our short throw shifter and see the improvement we get, so the first step is to remove the shift knob and all you have to do in most cases its just unscrewing it, in this case I have a spare shift knob so I have an adapter here that I just need to unscrew once I remove the shift knob now we need to remove this plastic bezel around the shifter and the easiest way is to just grab it underneath and pull it out into the Mustang.

We have a cigarette lighter so we need to make sure we remove the wires before we take it out so just remove the ground wire and then the power wire and now the bezels come off and it slides on. Then we want to remove the shifter handle that's connected by two bolts down here, release each of them with the ratchet and then we could loosen them by hand the rest of the way, that's one. and that's 2, now we can remove the shifter handle and there we go. Next we need to remove the lower shifter boot which is held on by two bolts down here and then two bolts back there, then the extension will help here and let's start with the front bolts, which are one and the other, now move to the two rear bolts.

These are a little harder to reach, but still not bad and make sure you don't lose these bolts because we will be reusing them now. lift up the lower shift boot and place it over the shifter and then it slides off and now we have access to the shifter to remove it. There are four bolts similar to the lower shift boot that we just removed, these are thirteen millimeters and that's it. It's a lot harder to get it loose than I expected, so it's time to use a breaker bar to loosen the four bolts with the breaker bar.

It's amazing how a little extra leverage makes it so easy to get them loose now that we can go back in with our Click Ratchet and remove the two front bolts and then remove the two rear bolts to free up our shifter. Now, with all four bolts removed, take a flathead screwdriver or pry bar and pry the base of the shifter away from the transmission and the old shifter. It should come out like this, look at that whole game, that's why sometimes it was hard to get into gear or felt clumsy. There is a lot of play in this now, if we compare it to our aftermarket shifter, there is no play at all in this.

This feels nice and solid, so our new shifter doesn't have any of that lean, but another piece we're going to replace to make the shifts feel firmer is this plastic bushing, the old plastic bushing is here down and it comes out just right. so and although this bushing appears to be in good condition, I'm curious how much wear it has, so I have a clamp here. I'm going to measure the inside diameter and we have about 16 millimeters, that's the inside width and here. I have our new bushing, so if we check the inside diameter of this one, there should be a smaller number.

Wow, almost a millimeter, so the old bushing had a 16 millimeter gap and the new bushing has a 15 millimeter gap, so there's an extra millimeter of material. here so that should give us a much tighter fit so it ended up being worth a few extra bucks since mine was worn out and it just slides in so it's easy to replace. Now we want to install our new shifter, but before we do that. Since the old shifter was sealed to the transmission with a gasket, you could actually see some of the excess gasket still stuck in the transmission, so we want to clean this contact surface and since we don't want any of the material from the old gasket falls into the transmission. transmission it's a good idea to shove a towel in there to seal it as well when removing the old gasket.

I highly recommend using a plastic scraper and not a metal one. A plastic scraper will not damage the surface, but if you use a metal one, it will. You could grab an edge and scratch the surface which could cause a leak and then if you want it perfect take an abrasive pad or whiskey brite and remove the rest of the gasket with the mating surface clean carefully remove the towel of paper so you don't get any debris into the transmission and now you have two different options you can use your already prepared gasket or you can use an RTV gasket maker this is much less complicated and that's what I'm going to use but if If you don't want to buy a gasket, you can use RTV gasket maker and spread a thin layer of gasket maker around the edge and it accomplishes exactly the same thing, so let's install the shifter.

I found it easier to align the gasket on the shifter. first and then push the shifter ball joint directly into the bushing without moving the joint like this and now we can bolt it on with the included bolts and I want to add some medium strength threadlocker to the bolts because there is a lot of vibration in the transmission This thread lock can be easily removed with hand tools, but prevents bolts from loosening while driving. The bolts are now ready to be hand tightened so that the shifter stays in place and you want to tighten them in a crisscross pattern so that they are tightened evenly and that joint is compressed evenly, it's not really necessary but I I like to use a torque wrench to make it exact and the bolts are tightened to 15 foot-pounds of torque, so now our Durr boat is in and now we want to adjust the stops of our boat and there are two change steps, there's one back here and another one up here so let's adjust this one first and what we need to do is put this in fourth gear to make sure it fits completely on gerd like So we can do our adjustment the whole shift stop is a bolt and you want to tighten the bolt until it touches the shifter handle once it's touching, then you want to remove the bolt about a quarter turn now if If you really want to get technical, you could get a feeler gauge and there's supposed to be a gap of one one-hundredth of an inch here, so this is a one-hundredth of an inch feeler gauge and it only has a slight resistance.

In fact, I'm going to back up. a little bit more, it's better to have them a little bit looser than a little bit too tight because you want to make sure you put the gear all the way in, so you want to back off about half a turn and that will give you a 1 one-hundredth of an inch gap once the gap is tightened correctly, get some thread locker, put it on the threads, hold the bolt head in place and tighten the nut, use one wrench to hold the bolt and another to tighten the nut so it is locked in place , then move the shifter forward and then bring it back and there should be a visible air gap between the top of the boat and the shifter and this looks perfect.

Now we'll do the same thing with the other shift stop, so put it on Third, the goal of these shift stops is to prevent you from overextending the shift and damaging the shift forks on your transmission, especially when you're shifting aggressively. Now you want to quickly test each gear to make sure it feels smooth and works. Turn the gear on, make sure the shift stops aren't touching the shifter and everything looks good, so let's turn the boot on and finish this now. This shifter comes with a washer to prevent the boot from getting pinched while shifting with the washer on.

We could then add the lower shift boot that slides right over the shifter and then tighten the four bolts we removed earlier to hold the lower shift boot in place. We're so close to being done that I can't wait to try this shifter now. We could screw on our shifter handle and there are some adjustments we can make first. Do we want on this side? or on this side. I'm going to put it on this side to have more room for the hydraulic brake and the other adjustment is to make. We want it up or down.

I'm going to put mine higher because I think it will be more comfortable and instead of connecting the shifter handle directly to the shifter, they give us this rubber isolating bushing that will help with vibration. and transmission noise, so hand tighten a bolt with some thread. Put a good screw in the bottom one as well and then tighten them with a ratchet so they fit snugly on the other side. Use the supplied locknuts to ensure the The shift lever handle does not come loose and tighten it with the ratchet. Now take the shifter boot and let's plug in the cigarette lighter, connect the ground and power cable and then slide the boot over the shifter handle, the plastic edge just pushes in and it clicks. into place and all we have left to do is put the shift knob on.

I use some Locker thread for the adapter pieces and screw them in and then tighten them with a wrench and now the shift knob just threads on perfectly, good and that's it. a short throw shifter needs to be installed, now let's put this onfirst gear and let's take a measurement to see how long the travel is now, so we're measuring from the same place before the top of the shift knob in first gear moves to second. We're about three and a half inches before we were four and a half inches, so we shorten the reach by an inch, not only do we shorten the reach by an inch, but if we get our hydraulic brake, we put it in place and then put this first of all look at that space it's a lot bigger than what we had before and if we put it second again we have a lot of space here so there's a lot of free space and that's because we move the gear lever only a little. so now I can type through the gears with the hydraulic brake without getting in the way and now let's do what we've all been waiting for, let's go for a ride holy smokes what a difference not only is the shorter throw but each shift feels incredible.

There's a nice, satisfying click in each gear. Yeah, I can't believe how much better it is and that's all it takes to install a short throw shifter as usual. I hope the video was helpful and if you're not a subscriber, please consider subscribing below. I'm going to show you how to install that hydraulic brake, which is going to be awesome, so stay tuned.