Hey all,

Few years back when doing my torque tube bushings I had replaced the shift cable bushing at the transmission as preventative maintenance. Fast forward to just a few days ago, the cable popped off of the shifter end on my drive home (thankfully it happened just after shifting into Drive, so I wasn't stranded).

I still had a spare bushing from doing this at the transmission side, so I replaced this one in the garage no problem. Wasn't much of an issue, and I was super careful to not pull up on the shift cable too much so I wouldn't break it. Got it back together and it shifts through all gears perfectly now.

I did have a question though - upon disassembly, I noticed the end of the shift cable with the bushing was pointing somewhat downwards like seen in the picture here. Once I got the new bushing into the cable, I had to twist this end of the cable clockwise a bit so that it would pop onto the joint at the bottom of the shifter. It didn't twist freely, it had a bit of tension on it when twisting which in retrospect has me a little concerned now. Looking at this photo, the open end of the bushing is facing downwards. I had to twist it clockwise maybe 75 degrees so that the open end of the bushing was facing left and would pop onto the bottom of the shifter.

Is this normal for it to both not be facing the proper direction and also have some tension on it when twisting? Like I mentioned, it seems to be shifting through the full gear range just fine, but in retrospect I am wondering if this isn't normal and I might be looking at a damaged cable down the road. I searched around a bit but couldn't find any other posts about having to twist the cable slightly to get it to fit, so I figured I'd ask.

Thanks in advance!