floppy gearstick!

[marky123]

Parden the pun, but my gearstick flops from left to right, the gears are still fully selectable though. The chap i am buying the car off said it is a bush of some sort. Anyone else had this issue?

Cheers, Mark.

 

[Riverside]

Yes it's pretty common, the play comes from wear at the front and/or rear linkages. The front is fairly straightforward to get to, the rear is over the gearbox & a right bugger. I had my rear linkage replaced when I had my clutch done so the additional cost was fairly minimal but it's probably going to cost a fair bit to fix on it's own.

 

[poprock]

You can buy a refurbished gearstick (can't recall who from "¦ I'll try and check tonight), which comes with some new bushes etc and quickly and easily removes all play at the front end of the linkage. They even take your old stick off your hands and refund you a tenner. As Riverside says, the rear linkage is a different (and trickier) kettle of fish. I found that just fixing up the easy end was enough to make a huge improvement.

 

[Neil Haughey]

Its actually pretty easy replacing the rear linkage. Took me and my brother about an hour. The PITA is if you have to replace the stay bar and its bushes because this bar connects on to the gearbox on the drivers side and all the fuel pump, tank and gubbins get in the way. To replace the linkage you just need to drop the rear exhaust section then its pretty easy access. You need 2 ppl because somebody has to sit in the car and hold the lever in the middle position whilst the other guy tightens the linkage up.

 

[marky123]

thanks for the info, will look into it.
Cheers, Mark.

 

[John Sims]

You can get a replacement front gear stick from Jon Mitchel at 9xx.

The front gear stick has a pin which receives the linkage rod. Over time this pin wears from a cylindrical shape to a lozenge shape. As a result the linkage has additional slack in its initial take up.

Similarly the rear linkage includes an isolating rubber which degrades over time. Some just replace the rear linkage with a new Porsche part others replace it with an undamped "quick shift" kit.

 

[poprock]

That's the feller. It was John Mitchell who sold me a refurbed stick.

 

[Robert Edwards]

Elsewhere, I have heards that for many gearshifts, you can replace the original bushings with brass - turned up for pennies. I do not know whether this applies to Porsche shifts...

 

[wblackw9]

I had the same problem as this, i took the car in to Newood transmissions in southend on sea cost me £80 total inc new link to have the back part rebuilt. The front shifter was very worn but at the time i didnt have the money to renew it so i made some bushings up and a clip to hold it to the shaft. Worked a treet and never had a problem after that and the stick had no play at all. Totaly different drive once sorted!