OK, it's kind of ridiculous, but I was aspleep , and I got up for some water. Then I thought "hey- I think I'll install my shifter..." So I did.
Followed Kingpin's (thanks for that, BTW) small-plate how-to and everything went smoothly. The oringinal bolts were indeed long enough for me to use the plastic piece on the underside of the tower- EXCEPT for the lower right bolt- the one that holds the reverse lockout tab. For this, I found a (5x55mm IIRC) bolt that would (barely) pass straight through the embedded nut in the plastic piece. I then used a matching 5mm nut to tighten it down. The whole process took about 35-40 minutes- IF you don't count the 20 min that I spent looking for that one bolt! Honestly, the hardest part was hammering in that damned pin!
Went for a quick test drive, and I must say that it does feel much more "crisp"- especially the 2 & 4 shifts- those 2 DO seem a LITTLE shorter than the 1 & 3; the 5 feels ALMOST as short as the 2/4. I do seem to hit the tower on the bottom ones too, though. I don't think it's the plastic piece though. On my test drive, I went without the boot in place, and I could see the shifter *tapping* the tower on the 2/4 shifts.
I was kinda leery at first, but I also removed the centering spring. Guys, just do it, because it kinda feels like it's stilll there anyway. You'll save yourself some teeny-tiny, cramped-space hacksaw/dremel work, too.
Rowing through the gearbox before the test drive, I thought I was having 99SVT's same problem, but it turned out that I hadn't snapped the bottom linkage on all the way- I gently took some pliers to squeeeeze it together and *CLICK* nice crisp shifts.
Anyone else break the mounts to the e-brake boot when you took out the center console? ...oh well, another thing to waste some time on I suppose. How DO you remove the e-brake handle, BTW?
Sorry so long-winded, Happy shifting.
-Chuck Dienzo
Black 98.5 E1 SVT
#5022 of 6535
Born on March 16, 1998
"If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason."