ss4luck

70* in Michigan meant everyone was out yesterday headed for Mexico when something in my shifter let loose. I have 1" of play both ways left and right while IN gear. I'm gonna pull the car apart tonight to see. At first I thought the box had come loose but the shifter itself won't rotate so I'm assuming it's something in the linkage or the shift ball itself.

Stupid cars

leadfoot4

Let's start with the easy issues....Clamp came loose on the shift rod?

ss4luck

That's what I'm hoping for.

SuperVetteC5

Yup! Most likely what happened.

v8srfun

Or the plastic bushing at the base of the shifter failed

neutron82

if I had to guess I would say the torx bolt holding the shift rod to the shifter box either came loose or what happened to mine was that it rounded off some of the threads and made the shifter feel very sloppy... I replaced it with a used header bolt (same thread pitch as the torx bolt but it is 10.9 grade so it is much stronger) and some blue loctite and it has worked great since

ss4luck

Well everything is apart. The shift rod is definitly rotating in the clamp. Gonna re thread lock it and snug it back up. There are some thread marks in the rod itself. If this works I'll get a new bolt tomorrow and re seal it. The points in the torx bolt are pretty chewed up

Rabbitman

I'd make sure to thread lock the lower shifter box bolts too while you have it apart. I put MGW in last week and forgot about thread locking them till I had it all back together. I did locktite the shifter rod good though. Did your MGW come with the alignment tool. That thing made it real easy as for getting it adjusted right.

ss4luck

Here was what it was doing when I got it apart. You can easily see everything movement when you don't want it to lol

ss4luck

Torqued the bolt to 22ft/lbs (factory spec) and it still seemed a little loose. Torqued it to 30 and no movement. Gonna take it for a ride in the morning and see what it's like then throw a new bolt with some lock tight in it. I'll order a new clamp anyway in case I'm I'd week it decides to move more. Supposed to be another good weekend next weekend and I can't miss the chance to do some rolling

nsogiba

I would install a new zinc coated bolt with a normal hex head, something that's long enough to extend all the way through the clamp. I recall someone on here mentioning that the stock bolt doesn't utilize all the available threads. You need all the clamping power you can get. Those torx heads are really prone to getting stripped out once you start putting some torque on them.

neutron82

header bolts work great