The rust preparation continues, but in the meantime I've been driving the car a bit. One thing was driving me crazy...
the shifter. The pattern on the 901 transmission is new to me anyway, but this wasn't the problem.
My issue was that the feel of the shifter was terrible. There was a "muddy" gray area, going left to right, that made it impossible to tell if you were in gear at all, let alone figure out which gear it was. Also, going to 1st gear was especially hard, since its position was down-left on the H pattern and the shifter would run into the seat. I asked James, who told me that I likely had to take out the shifter to see the cup where the ball of the shifter was seated.
Here are some awful pics but it explains the process I used to fix the shifter.
Removing the shifter was so easy on this car. I removed the three 13mm bolts that hold it in the console, then the two 10mm bolts that hold the cable in place. Here's what the plastic "cup" looks like, that the lower ball of the shifter rotates and moves in:
The pic doesn't really explain the problem, but the cup was nearly disintegrated. The sides were completely gone, meaning the ball had almost no support.
I bought a new cup for under $10 from our local parts house. Lubed it up a bit, then installed it onto the shifter's ball:
Then I took a sharp pick and hacked away at the old, worn-out cup until it could be removed. I put some of this grease onto the new cup and put it in place.
Here's the old cup, removed from its hole:
I installed the 5 bolts and took it for a drive. EUREKA! Night and day difference... now the shifter's tight and predictable. No more sloppy guessing about which gear is which, and I can actually downshift it now. I really dig this transmission now.
