Clunky Gear Shifter

[red01GTS]

I tried to seach the forums but did not find anything on this. I bought my 01 GTS with a "short throw" shifter installed by the previous owner. I am not sure what type, waiting on my skip shift eliminator to show up to do any disassembling.

The shifter feels tight but it is very very heavy and imprecise. Any one replace the shifter stalk only, leaving the stock shifter in place? If so, how does it feel? My shifter feels like there is lose of mechanical advantage (ie too short), thus having to fight to get into gear smoothly.

 

[dave6666]

There are 2 ways to reduce shifter throw, that can be used alone or combined.

One, is to simply make the shifter arm shorter. There are several vendors that sell those parts, and I've also seen the hacksaw method used. In either case, you are reducing the mechanical advantage by shortening the arm; it will be harder to shift then.

The other method is to change the shifter. It has a pivot built into it, of which there is dimension X on one side of the pivot and dimension Y on the other. Call one the shifter arm and the other the internal mechanism arm. To make a short throw shifter you must relocate the pivot point of the X-Y relationship. Change the ratio of X to Y. If you want X to move less to get the same effect with Y, make Y longer, which of course you have to make the shifter taller to move the pivot point up. The same in the case above, you lose mechanical advantage when you gain the shorter travel.

The loss of mechanical advantage can be overlooked if everything is like a super precision well oiled machine; shifter, tranny, etc. It sounds like yours either has a problem or yours has exceeded the comfort level of loss of mechanical advantage.

There is also a bushing inside the shifter area where it engages the transmission that could be worn. You will need to pull the shifter to check it.

When you put your skip shift on you will not gain access to the shifter, as the skip shift is plug-n-play on the side of the tranny.

Other items... Clutch condition? Motor & tranny mount condition?

 

[red01GTS]

Thanks dave6666, all good stuff.

I had my car inspected at a local Dodge dealer by a Viper mechanic when I bought it. According to him the motor and trany mounts looked fine (I don't detect any unusual shift under power), clutch seemed fine (no slipping etc).

As my car is in Tennessee and I only get to see it every couple of months (feels like joint custody, lol). I try to batch together simple mods that I can do. ie skip shift eliminator, shifter, fresh air pickup and Roe Cats the next trip.

Thanks for the tips.

 

[dave6666]

I had my car inspected at a local Dodge dealer by a Viper mechanic when I bought it. According to him the motor and trany mounts looked fine (I don't detect any unusual shift under power), clutch seemed fine (no slipping etc).

To properly check the motor mounts you have to jack the engine and look for separation. If the tech only gave the eyeball, then that was not sufficient. Here's the small gap you could see on mine when the engine was jacked. The mount otherwise looked perfect.

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Here's what that mount looked like out of the car.

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Those are from my 2001 GTS, which they were like that when I bought the car with ~18K miles.

To check clutch slippage put it in 5th at about 70 mph and punch it to the floor. If your rpm goes whoopsie and the car's speed does not increase proportionally, then you need a clutch.

Also might want to add the tranny fluid to your next maintenance list.

 

[red01GTS]

Very interesting. I will get the mechanic to check the mounts more appropriately. I am sure that he did not jack the engine.

Thanks again.