Well, I guess I just don't know my own strenth and got a little carried away on a speed shift to 3rd. All I know is it was a sickening feeling as it went "POP" and the shifter went limp in my hand! Kind of a little embarrassing when you have your family in the car with you and your hot-dogging skills get you in trouble!

I figured it was the ball/socket joint, and fortunately I still could find 2nd gear. I limped her home the 4 miles and grabbed the next available vehicle... Tackled it later after the Father's Day outing!

At least I redeemed myself a little by being able to dismantle it and fix it myself vs. having to tow it to a garage or something. I took a little while, about an hour, but most was due to being unsure how to take it apart. Thanks to Crazysteve for the photos in his How To write up on the shifter install!

I learned my lesson though, the no-lift shifts will be very limited, and use a much softer throw! This thing is like a wet noodle compared to my Competition+ Hurst setup in my Firebird!

 

Ooops! . . . at least it was family and not friends that would ridicule you every time they could . . .

 

Yup, you are right about that. I can think of a few of my buddies that would never let me live that down if they were there!

Although I am sure my wife will have a few choice words to say if I start getting carried away with the competion mode any time to soon !

 

This is the exact reason i didn't buy a manual LT , I was afraid of this happening.

 

Really? I had never heard of this happening before... I guess I have not had any light duty shifters on my cars though, come to think of it.

Funny story... On a related subject, when I was a kid (I suppose about 14 years old) I took my Dad's old '63 Dodge Dart for a cruise without permission. We lived on a farm and it wasn't uncommon for me or other kids my age to drive occaisionally to run errands, etc... But this was a pure joyride and the agenda was testing the tire burning capabilities of the ol' 6 cylinder with 3 speed on the column!

My brother had mounted a big chrome steel ball as a trusty shift knob, but I wasn't aware it wasn't the correct thread on the shifter and it wasn't on all that tight. As I flew past my budddies house I saw the gang standing outside so I proceded to slam on the brakes and jammed it into reverse on the fly. Yes, it was a healthy grinding of course and then I nailed the gas and dumped the clutch. Yes, the tires started smaoking, but a huge wheel-hop situation soon started and the shifter apparently shook so violently that that Mr. Chrome-Ball exited right into the winsdshield and smashed it producing a huge bulge and spiderweb cracking across the whole windshield! The I realized I had jammed the shift-linkage up tight... Now I was really screwed!

I backed the car up all the way home (about 2 miles) and my friend and I pried and pulled the linkage free. I gave my dad some lame story that I was throwing rocks for out dog (she would retrieve anything!) but I knew he wasn't buying it. I confessed to the whole deal some time later, as I still felt guilty even after helping him replace the window. There are plenty of stories like that that I have relived with my dad, and he usually says something like "Yup, I fugured that it was something like that that happened, but as long as nobody got hurt..."

 

Nice story.

 

ya it even says not to shift to fast during no-lift-shift but it's hard not too when you accelerating so quickly. It's still hard for me sometimes to do soft shifts when all you wanna do is just punch it in. When I first tried it out i got a couple misfires cause i was shifting to fast.

 

Same here. Plus the wife can't drive a 5-speed, and I sure didn't want to try to teach her in my new HHR