Days
5 & 6 - Gearchange
12/1/03 & 12/2/03
Got under the car to hook up the gear change mechanism to the transmission selector rod, and lo and behold the gear change was way too short and didn't come close to the transmission. Fortunately, Steven included the gear change mechanism from the donor polo.
The shifter was weird looking anyways, with a couple wires in it and what looked like some kind of electric microswitch. It came out with great difficulty, but working from inside and underneath the car I finally managed to get the shifter out and then the rest of the gear change linkage. Here's the weird shifter:
It looked like from under the car that a piece of metal was added to where the normal opening in the floor is for the gear change box to stick through. This had to be removed, and then four holes drilled (the spots where the holes should be were plugged with metal) to properly fit the correct assembly. Stuck it through the floor and bolted it to the chassis. (Boy that sounds a lot easier than it was- took over an hour!) Here's what the gear change looks like from under the car:
After I got it bolted in, I attached the coupling between the gear change and the selector rod on the transmission. Here's what it looks like all connected:
After I got it loosely connected I adjusted the coupling according to the service manual and tightened everything up. It took about three tries before the shifter felt correct, but now I can shift between all 5 gears and reverse. This was a good feeling. Here's the shifter from inside the car (without the appropriate trim):
After this, I went under the hood for some more work.
Go
To Days 5 & 6 Continued
