Transmission, Manual

Shifter Cup Failure

Dear fellow sharksters:
Yesterday, while returning from lunch, I went to do a heel & toe downshift and found NO gear. The shifter cup had come off the socket. Fortunately, I was going downhill and only a few hundred yards from the entrance to my office building.

About an hour later, the car was flat-towed to Intersport, where Charlie (the proprietor) was able to get the GT fixed in less than an hour. He spent about 15 minutes removing the rear belly pan and lowering the
cats from the exhaust manifold, and 10 minutes to remove the old cup that was already disconnected. To put the new cup on took about 15 and another 15 was spent bottoning everything back up. That adds up to about 55 minutes. In actuality we spent alot of time shooting the breeze, so the total elapsed time was closer to 1.5 hours.

Merry motoring, Ed.


I have another, more serious, problem. I had the Shark out yesterday and I
could feel my shifter going "soft". At one point when I shifted up to 2nd
my hand almost struck the radio. Following that, I had no gears and ended
up, embarrassingly, pushing the car through a busy, and angry,
intersection.

It is not a mystery. I had the car towed and quickly spotted the problem. There is a rod that goes forward from the shifter and anchors at the front of the tourque tube (on top of the tube unfortunately). This rod had a ball socket assembly on the end (much like a miniature tie rod end). The socket has become dislocated from the ball. I have removed the heat shields, catalytic converter and cross bridge member. I can see it, touch it and I'm confident that I can get a wrench on the rod to remove the old socket half of the joint which is removeable with a wrench. The problem is I can't see how the stud part is attached to the torque tube. It doesn't appear to be machined for a wrench. Even if it were, I don't know how I would get a tool on it. The only thing I can think of is it may be accessible somehow through the site hole for the shaft coupler that is just below it. Failing this I would have to remove the entire tube assembly? Tell me it ain't so!

Joe PENDLETON
'81 928 Pewter


Dear Joe:
We are living parallel lives as this happened to me on Monday. The shop I took the car to was able to replace the socket connector in about an hour.

You do not have to remove the ball, just the socket. The socket is screwed into the shifter linkage shaft and held in place by a lock nut. Count the number of exposed threads, loosen the nut, then unscrew the connector. Install the new one in reverse order. Make sure to maintain the same number of exposed threads. The hard part will be getting the socket over and onto the ball. The mechanic was able to do it on the first try with the help of a large screw driver that looks more like a pry-bar. Once it's on, tighten the locknut.

Good luck and merry motoring, Ed.


Joe,

You don't need to replace the stud that is fixed on the torque tube. Just replace the ball cup on the end of the shift rod. There's a nylon insert in the cup which has worn out and allowed the cup to come off the stud.

Ed's mechanic _somehow_ managed to fix this problem on Ed's car recently in just under an hour. Aside from the fact that he had a lift, I am still clueless on how he could have done this so quickly since it took me waaayyy longer. On my '83, there is a bearing welded on top of the torque tube through which the front guide rod runs. This bearing prevents you from moving the guide rod sideways very far to ease access to the ball cup. I'm suspecting that later models may have elminated this bearing and therefore allow more lateral motion of the guide tube.

Ed - since your mechanic does this in less than an hour, I think this would be a great demonstration for the Frenzy. I'd even chip in a few extra dollars to help pay for an hour of his time.

--
Jim Stadter
'83 928 S 5-speed (U.S. spec)
'88 928 S4 5-speed


You are correct, there was no bearing on the GT shifter linkage, which may be why it was relatively easier to install the socket.

Ed Ruiz