tom3
04-13-2004, 09:52 PM
First I'd like to give credit to raiyo for the idea he posted in this thread (http://www.ephatch.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26683).
Then I also got another idea from another forum member whose name escapes me now. He showed us how to flip the top fixture on the stock boot so that the chrome plastic part is on the inside, and the inside black clip is on the outside. Basically you detach the chrome part by squeezing two tabs inside it, then you put the two back together, except with the chrome piece on the inside.
The top of the boot would look like this:
http://www.rit.edu/~tyc0429/car/shifter/boot1.JPG
And an inside view of the top of the boot:
http://www.rit.edu/~tyc0429/car/shifter/boot2.JPG
You can kind of see the chrome part, with a rubber washer stuffed in there (as per raiyo's idea).
But it turned out that the lone rubber washer was not enough to hold the boot up in my case. Overtime, the top of the boot would always slide down. Sometimes the rubber washer would pop out of the chrome piece too, which is annoying because all this occurs under the boot, sometimes requiring me to remove the cover and do it all over again.
So I came up with a solution that would rid this problem once and for all. What I did was I got 2 more rubber washers (to fix unto the shifter shaft tightly), and 2 nylon spacers (to increase the height), and stacked them together on the shifter shaft to hold the top of the boot up (I had measured the necessary height). I soon found that by themselves, each individual piece was prone to sliding down the shaft past the first bend, which defeats the purpose of having them there in the first place.
I then superglued the washers and spacers together to form one tall "boot spacer", it looks like this:
http://www.rit.edu/~tyc0429/car/shifter/spacers.JPG
The boot spacer now goes on the shifter shaft and stays above the first bend:
http://www.rit.edu/~tyc0429/car/shifter/spacersOn.JPG
Then I just put everything back together, and now the boot stays up, and it doesn't slide down one bit even when I apply some force on it.
The end result:
http://www.rit.edu/~tyc0429/car/shifter/done1.JPG
http://www.rit.edu/~tyc0429/car/shifter/done2.JPG
http://www.rit.edu/~tyc0429/car/shifter/done3.JPG
Total cost of modification was about 2 dollars for the 3 rubber washers (including the one stuffed in the chrome part) and 2 nylon spacers. What I love the most about this approach is that it's completely reversible. So I can, if I need to, return everything back to stock.
BTW I have a titanium color knob now instead of the bright chrome one. :D
Then I also got another idea from another forum member whose name escapes me now. He showed us how to flip the top fixture on the stock boot so that the chrome plastic part is on the inside, and the inside black clip is on the outside. Basically you detach the chrome part by squeezing two tabs inside it, then you put the two back together, except with the chrome piece on the inside.
The top of the boot would look like this:
http://www.rit.edu/~tyc0429/car/shifter/boot1.JPG
And an inside view of the top of the boot:
http://www.rit.edu/~tyc0429/car/shifter/boot2.JPG
You can kind of see the chrome part, with a rubber washer stuffed in there (as per raiyo's idea).
But it turned out that the lone rubber washer was not enough to hold the boot up in my case. Overtime, the top of the boot would always slide down. Sometimes the rubber washer would pop out of the chrome piece too, which is annoying because all this occurs under the boot, sometimes requiring me to remove the cover and do it all over again.
So I came up with a solution that would rid this problem once and for all. What I did was I got 2 more rubber washers (to fix unto the shifter shaft tightly), and 2 nylon spacers (to increase the height), and stacked them together on the shifter shaft to hold the top of the boot up (I had measured the necessary height). I soon found that by themselves, each individual piece was prone to sliding down the shaft past the first bend, which defeats the purpose of having them there in the first place.
I then superglued the washers and spacers together to form one tall "boot spacer", it looks like this:
http://www.rit.edu/~tyc0429/car/shifter/spacers.JPG
The boot spacer now goes on the shifter shaft and stays above the first bend:
http://www.rit.edu/~tyc0429/car/shifter/spacersOn.JPG
Then I just put everything back together, and now the boot stays up, and it doesn't slide down one bit even when I apply some force on it.
The end result:
http://www.rit.edu/~tyc0429/car/shifter/done1.JPG
http://www.rit.edu/~tyc0429/car/shifter/done2.JPG
http://www.rit.edu/~tyc0429/car/shifter/done3.JPG
Total cost of modification was about 2 dollars for the 3 rubber washers (including the one stuffed in the chrome part) and 2 nylon spacers. What I love the most about this approach is that it's completely reversible. So I can, if I need to, return everything back to stock.
BTW I have a titanium color knob now instead of the bright chrome one. :D