xs650

Click on thumbnail photos when you want to actually see something.

B&M shifter installations have been covered in other threads, so I'll try to avoid duplicating previous work.

I'm also not claiming to have the Holy Grail, I probably wouldn't do it this way again. I would take a serious look at the MTI shifter.

This post may be of some interest to you if you want to know what's in the B&M, and/or want to quiet one down.

I also stiffened up the mushy B&M O-Ring cushioned lever and did some noise supression

I took a B&M apart to see how it works.

The upper lever is aluminum and is completely isolated from the lower steel lever by some O-Rings that IMHO are too soft for a short throw shifter. You end up with a short throw but not a lot of feel. One of the o-rings on the small cross pin was severly torn when I took the shifter apart. The edges were left sharp so it would have been difficult to assemble without tearing an o-ring. A friend had the same problem on his. B&M did send replacements after I called them, two weeks after I called them.

The real heart of the shifter is the spherical bushing that the lever pivots in. The B&M bushing has a little more play than the stock shifter, but seems to work OK. If it had some preload, I suspect the shifter would be quieter.
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Bottom of the console. GM did a nice job of sound insulation in the shifter area.

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Stock shifter with console off. The tan piece is rubbery and fits the lever tightly. A little KY Jelly helps slide it over the lever....Hey, the car was built in KY.
Anyway, nice tight fitting sound barrier

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Next is the black rubber barrier. It fits nicely around the sealed snout of the stock shifter. B&M's modified C5 shifter doesn't do so well as you will see later.

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Stock shifter with rubber barriers removed. Nice seal on the shifter mechanism.

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B&M Shifter bolted in place. I used the two metal bushings B&M supplies to mount the shifter. They fit nicely and I was able to easily squeeze them in place with a vise. A mallet works too. They had to hold some tight tolerances to make those parts a reasonable press fit.

What doesn't show is that I reassembled the B&M shifter withut the rubber o-rings. One side of the aluminum upper handle and the shaft had a 0.385 hole (9.8mm). I drilled the other wall of the aluminum handle out to 0.386 (W drill bit) and used length of 10x1.25mm screw (9.8mm actual diameter) as a pin to assemble the handle. I slathered it with JB Weld before I installed it, I also turned the aluminum handle upside down and poured some JB weld in before assembly. Then I installed the steel lever and 10x1.25 screw, filled the cavity with JB weld and hung it upside down overnight to set.

If you go this route, use the normal JB weld, not the quick setting variety or you won't have enough time to get everything in place. Next morning the excess screw got cut and ground off and the handle painted. That effectively made it as solid as a ripper handle.

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Stock black rubber barrier back in place, The B&M snout doesn't fit like the stock shifter snout does.

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I cut a piece of sound barrier material to fit tightly around the B&M snout and into the stock black rubber barrier. The foam side is up and can be seen. The lead impregnated vinyl side is down and can't be seen.

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Stock beige rubber piece back in place with more KY Jelly. This piece isn't in the shop manual and I haven't heard the beige barrier mentioned before, maybe it's an improvement? The whole GM shifter installation looks very well done.

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The B&M lever looks straight in the pictures. It is also bent but lower on the lever than the stock lever. The shift **** end ups in about the same position.

Results:

Shift throw is short, maybe a bit shorter than ideal but I like it a lot better than the stock shfter throw. It's real good, not a problem.

With all of the rubber out of the system including the rubber shift box mounts and the rubber I took out of the B&M handle, it feels like a rifle bolt. It really feels directly connected to the transmission

You can really feel what's going on when you shift. I wonder if this is what some people are calling notchiness? If you like to feel what your tranmission is doing when you shift, you will like the feel. Different stroke for different folks...pun intended.

The only downside was noise. It was quiet enough during normal cruising around, but set up a racket at 2900 rpm and up at high throttle. I was able to eliminate most of the noise and make it completely satisfactory for my wife and myself with a couple of changes.

1. The **** is a bit loose on the shaft and can be made to buzz. It fits the B&M shaft about as well as the stock shaft, so I probably caused a lot of the problem by eliminating the rubber in the B&M lever. I got rid of the **** buzz by wrapping the shaft with vinyl electrical tape until the diameter was right to install the **** with some rubber mallet tapping.

2. I wrapped the shift lever with Brownbread between the shifter ball joint and the shift ****. I used a strip of Brownbread 24inches long ans 2.3 inches wide and wrapped it around the shaft. Brownbread is an acoustic vibration absorbing material. It has since been replaced by another material that looks like it should work even better. B-Quiet Ultimate

You will have to find it with Google because this forum software says I have too many links here.

I also used some of the Brownbread on a friends B&M Ripper in his C6. The Ripper was quieter the the JB welded 45044. The Brownbread made it almost as quiet as stock shifter.

If I were really set on using B&M again, I would start with the Ripper, modify it to take the C6 **** and apply a little sound deadening instead of using the 54044. Same result, less work.

Blue02Z06

thanks for the writeup XS, ive been thinking of doing a shifter, im just scared to death of the dreaded "rattle". I had the hurst on my C5Z with no problems at all, i just dont want to take the chance of not being happy with one on the C6.

Dave

xs650

Thanks, this also gives me a chance to give a link to the new brown Bread Substitue, B-Quiet Ultimate.
http://www.b-quiet.com/ultimate.html

Their minimum order on their web page is 12 ft^2 for $55. When I delt with them a couple of years ago, they were real nice people to deal with. I'm guessing they would sell a smaller piece without jabbing you on the price. Or you could get the 12 ft^2 and add some sound deadening to the cargo area to cut down tire noise

Miaugi

Great write up and excellent pics as well!

EuroRod

Why can't B&M include these excellent fixes with their product? Guess their engineers just can't figure anything out for themselves. I wouldn't buy a used dog food can from B&M. Overpriced junk, IMHO. With all the trouble people have had, think they owe us a re-call. Maybe a forum lawyer can initiate a class action against them. I could have mixed a frozen margritta with my B&M.

d_bravo33

Thanks, XS. There have been a dozen threads on the subject of aftermarket short shifters and the rattle/buzz they give. The stock C6 MN6 shifter is well designed and fairly quiet with the pivot, ball and shaft isolated with a variety of rubber and plastic fittings. The pivot point is low, however, so the throw is long and the effort is relatively low.

If you like short, precise shifts of the aftermarket shifters (B & M, Hurst, Callaway, etc.) and want to reduce the noise, XS's solution seems to work pretty well. It was my B & M ripper he mentioned above. The shaft on this shifter is basically a stainless steel bar with a pivot and ball. It transmitted tranny noise as an annoying buzz or rattle in 1st and 3rd gear. My tuner suggested strapping wheel weights to the shaft, something that didn't appeal to me very much. XS came up with the brownbread (B-Quiet) solution and it virtually eliminated the buzz without affecting the action.

As he said, the MTI shifter also looks very promising. I'm anxious to see comments from guys who are using it.

Vet

Excellent - thanks!