My Oversteer.com Short Shifter takes a gorilla to shift..
 

We just installed the Oversteer' SSK along with a Pelican Parts shifter rebuild bushing kit. All new parts. We had to bend the selector knob to make it fit over the driveshaft...as stated in the instructions. All went pretty smooth and we lubed all the appropriate parts etc.

Jesus H' it takes a gorilla shift this thing now:eek:. Before I basically just "touched" the shifter and it slid in. Butter. It was a dream gearbox but with a real loong throw.

Now the effort to get into Reverse, 1st and 2nd is huge...tough as any short shifter I've used. Reverse in particular is a joke... 3rd, 4th and 5th are also pretty tough but livable. The throws now are short and quick though. Killer. Too bad it's like a workout to get the car around town. I might have to take it off and go for a smaller % shift kit. Chris at Oversteer says it's 40% over stock but to me it seems more like 50 or 60 percent

Anyone else been through this with Oversteer.com's shifter?

It should not be hard to get in gear.
I have a UUC SSK so I can't comment on Chris'.

In my E30, I put in a Z8 shift lever. :biggrin:

yep it's tough as hell to get into reverse and 1st. Reverse bangs into the console on the upper left. 2nd slams into the console as I bring it back. This sucks as I hate doing stuff twice. Chris thinks I might have the rubber boot in the wrong position but we checked while it was on the lift and it's right where it belongs. We even tried rotating the shifter 180 degrees and then it banged the front of the console.

My gearbox was not that notchy to begin with...quite nice actually for 147k so I couldn't believe how radically it changed with just the shifter. shame as the throws are great with it....just flick flick and the I don't lose half as many revs' between shifts as before. Unfortunately it's just too much to live with on a day to day basis:frown:

hmm very weird. i did a mildly modded m3 shifter and the throws are about 40-50% shorter and my throws are just a tiny bit harder. nothing bad at all. and very livable. i dont even notice it anymore and i did the shifter less than a week ago.

seems like something is wrong. i havent heard of it being very hard to put in gear.
maybe try a different rod bend.

Yeah I'm not sure whats up with this shifter. I'm not having as much fun driving as I did 2 days ago and that suks. The bent rod thing is a bit sketchy..I mean it says to bend the rod but not how much. Maybe your right we should back off on the bend. Right now we have a 1/2" clearance.

FYI there is a great comparison by Mallard on all the stock BMW SSK's side by side. The easy and least invasive on eis the 1.9 Z3 lever but you prolly know that. And also, it's UNDERsteer.com, not oversteer, unless you meant that.

Yeah Z3 is the way I should have gone. I have the extra parts ie cup, clips and washers so it won't be too hard. Yep I call it oversteer.com for some strange reason...maybe 'cause I don't like understeer so much. I hate that word lol after driving awd cars for so long

i didnt even have to bend my rod. it was centered and everything! i was lucky lol

On my 98 ti I used a 1.9L Z3 shift lever. It dropped right in.

Which shifter is this? I put in the MZ3 shifter, and bent the shaft too. The shifter is stiff, but I like it that way. I don't want the shifter ever popping out of gear. Not sure how hard yours is, without being there.

^It's always better when you don't have to bend your rod :cool:. Now a weighted rod that's different. A heavier rod is always gonna' be an advantage:wink:. We plan to make our next rod real heavy....like lead and steel...or like fat chick heavy:eek:

Yeah I guess I'm not used to such a stiff shifter...and the position is waay off. I think I'll be happy with a Z3 shifter w/weighted rod. Anyone have a quote on the Z3 shifter from the dealer?

mmmm fat chick heavy! and cover it up with a weighted knob!

I forgot to mention, I bent it to clear the driveshaft AND bent it to center the shifter too.

http://iris.nyit.edu/~egrodsky/BMW/Shifting.wmv

A super heavy weighted knob would be great as well...to bad I'm not willing to give up my super deluxe pimp daddy lighted M3 knob. It's one knob I don't mind grabbing

Well, If your bend is too much it could throw off the linear alignment when shifting causing some kind of binding preventing a smooth gear selection. I read it off of a site, I forget which. I have a z4 3.0 shifter in my ti. It's the bomb. I kinda want to cut it shorter though because I'm crazy.

I did the solder wrapped ghetto WSR. I have about two credit cards worth of clearance in all gears between the wsr and the drive shaft harmonic balancer.
My reverse hits the center console trim.
My 5th hits if I really throw it into gear, just due to the flex in the shifting assembly. When in gear it doesn't touch.

I have no problems shifting into any gear. Super quick shifts.

Had to bend the shift lever though for centering purposes.

It sits nice and towards the back some, just where i wanted it to be. :cool:

I would try taking some of the bend out.

^ How do you like it? did you replace the lever bushing? The one I had with it was kinda beat. Not as bad as my ti one though!!!

nope i didnt replace the bushing. i will eventually but for the time being it was literally about 5 times better than mine :)

^It's too late I'm going for the stock Z3 shifter compromise. The Understeer shifter is officially up for sale for 50 bucks

for a shifter they were giving away for free, and now for $50, I can't imagine it would really be that high quality, you get what you pay for

no pauly this undetsteer one is good quality!

ddm was giving away free short shifters not understeer.

oh, I got confused, to many SSK deals going on :biggrin:

no problem. the ddm ones are pretty cheap and well the price should show the quality :)

Moose,
When I did my SSK it did not line up well. I used the M3 slector rod and shifter. I ended up reverting back to the ti selector rodd and put a healthy bend in it, and things lined up better. Finally I had to tweak the slector rod a bit to get the side to side alignment right.
After I got it in the right spot, I weighted the selector rod with solder and electrical tape.
So far ir works great.

yeah I think when I put the Z shifter in we'll take our time and make sure it's centered. We will weight the selector rod with something heavy...real heavy, like a big mac. Those things are:eek: heavier than lead. Kidding I'd never use food products on my car. that's just crazy

^ I used a wendy's triple cheeseburger.

Now thats heavy!:tongue:

MMMMmmmmm. Clogged arteries.

Yeah that's better than a 'Mac. Too bad we don't have any WENDYS near us. For the record a Happy Meal doesn't do sh*t for improved shifting. Not even with a bigass fries.....

On the other hand a 7/11 foot long dog' will do the trick for awhile 'till you can get the appropriate item:wink:

hahahahaha