Some LSX Progress RennsportKC

Last couple of weeks I have been knee deep in wiring. My cable sheathing finally came in and I was able to run the wiring from the oil pressure sender and temp sensor to the instrument cluster. Once that was done, I was able to turn it over and build oil pressure. After verifying no leaks, I finished more of the wiring and did a test fire. Vroom! Not bad considering the MAF/o2’s are not hooked up at all. Kind of surprised it ran at all 🙂

Meanwhile, I have been working on tightening up the shift linkage assembly. The 944’s are notorious for getting side to side excessive slop in the shift lever when it gear. There are quite a few components that will wear out and cause this to happen.
1. The shift lever pin where it inserts into the shifter rod will wear down and go from a nice cylindrical shape to an hourglass shape. Simple to replace the lever for about $50. If you catch it early, many times this alone will take out 90% of the slop. Let it go too far, and the issue becomes much bigger to fix.
2. The shifter rod hole where the shifter lever pin inserts will also start to wallow out. Replacing the shifter may not fix all your slop if there is a wallowed out hole. There are a couple of fixes out there for this including inserting plastic bushings, or bronze tubing, or replacing the rod completely (likely not feasible $$$).
3. Shift lever assembly at the transaxle has a plastic coupler in it that will wear over time and cause slop there. Normally this piece is replaced when installing a short shift kit, but as of currently, all short shifts on the market are cheap Chinese junk! Schnell, etc are horrible. They will either fall apart, or the fact that the shift pattern is so uneven it will drive you crazy. A better solution is to keep the stock shift mechanism but replace the plastic bushing with Stuttgart motorsports billet aluminum piece. This will tighten up the linkage assembly nicely.
4. The crossbar on the transmission linkage is a ball and socket piece that can also wear out.

Replacing/modifying all of the above at the same time is really the thing to do. It will tighten up your shifter nicely, and make it feel like new 🙂

I replaced the shift lever in my car a few years ago trying to tighten it up, but it didn’t do much as the rod was wallowed out. I swapped out to a lower mileage rod which helped a little, but still was sloppy. This time we are going to fix it for good 🙂

For the propose of our 2 part tutorial, I am going to chop up a perfectly good shift lever.

Cut off the pin and grind off the weld holding it on.

And weld on a new pin.

Then we are going to use a couple washers and roller bearings to tighten up the linkage.

Like this. Simple mock up purposes, but for the final product I will use a thinner jamb nut and red loctite to keep the linkage tight. This will take out all the slop in the lever/rod assembly, while still allowing the unit to pivot.

Back at the transaxle end I have removed the cross linkage and built a custom replacement rod.

Here is the plastic bushing that will get slop in it. You can grab the mechanism and wiggle it side to side and watch the play between the bushing and mechanism. This block will be replaced as soon as the new ones show up in the mail! Stay tuned.