Every two years, I start to get a symptom indicating a five-hour pain in the butt job is necessary. You know that feeling when you grit your teeth before you downshift for a corner at a traffic signal? That hole in your gut that tells you second gear just won't be there, and you're going to nibble off a little bit of reverse before you try for second again?
Yup. I consider that to be the single biggest pain my car has in store for me. The bushing responsible lives below the shifter and back about two inches. It's a round, split bushing with a little metal clip that encompasses its circumference, holding it around the shift rod. The whole assembly then fits into a hole in a metal tab, welded to the underside of the top of the tunnel.
The bushing isn't the pain. Instead, the dreaded shift coupler, located directly behind and between my seats, is the PITA. He is an "H"-shaped metal affair, with nylon bushings plugged in at the sides, and he's what's holding the shift rod into the hockey stick at the front of the transaxle. You have to remove HIM to remove the rod, and you have to remove the rod to replace the stupid little three-dollar shifter bushing.
Naturally, he lives in an impossible-to-reach position in a hole, like little Jimmy in the well, and I need to remove all kinds of stuff from the car in order to lower myself on a rope and rescue the little bastard.
Rubber exam gloves, new bushing, grease, music, beer, cigar and patience (coupled with metric wrenches and a little tiny pair of Vise Grips, a good pair of needle-nose pliers and a lot of cussing) is my recipe for success. I also tried something new this year, and used a telescoping magnet to hold the sleeve and the machine screw as I oriented them toward their holes in the coupler. That worked out pretty well in the end.
Ahhh. Another one for the books -- and, amazingly, I have no more fear of engaging second when I want it. I did a little forensic analysis of the old bushing when I finally got it out of there, and ... well ... maybe that should be an annual check for any car over 35.
The first picture is the access hole for the coupler. It's different than most, because I re-routed the placement of the 2" box-steel tubing to make the chassis stronger, and in so doing managed to screw myself for this particular maintenance. I had to remove my battery, my oil tank and my auxiliary cooling fan in order to get to the part, then had to do the hunch-monkey in order to grab one side with the tiny Vise Grips and turn the tapered screw with a wrench at the same time.
The second picture is the Vise-Grips-and-wrench pain. There's GOT to be a better way.
The third is the forensics shot. That white bushing in the middle is the replacement I put in, since the one I took out was made of the same clear silicone material as the one in the background. I hope it works for at least a year before I have to do this all over again.
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