Alright, don't laugh, I was bored
OK, here's the problem I was hearing: The stock shift lever is actually two seperate metal units. The outer and inner metal parts are seperated by soft rubber material designed to isolate vibrations. That sounds good, but the rubber is too soft and causes some play in the lever movement. Check the animation in this link from UUC.
http://www.shortshifter.com/comparo.htm (It's towards the bottom of the page). I have two stock (used) shift levers and the play is quite significant in one of them.
Here's an old 318is lever. Notice the black rubber isolation.
So, my original plan was to rip out the old rubber, then replace it with 80a durometer urethane. The problem with that plan is: #1 liquid urethane isn't too easy to find. #2 The stuff I found on eBay was rather expensive. What's the plan now? HOT GLUE STICKS!! Seriously! They are very similar to urethane in hardness, super-cheap, easy to find, and errors can easily be fixed with some heat. Here goes....
Step #1.
Etch marks onto your shift lever so upon reassembly, the two halves are in correct orientation. You can see marks in some pictures below. If they are not aligned when you are done, the shift knob will be off center (not pointed straight ahead).
Step #2.
You'll need to seperate the two halves of the shift lever. I used a big pot of boiling water and let the lever soak for a while. I kept the lower linkage hole out of the water, since the eyelet is lined with plastic and I didn't want to damage it. Sorry, no pics of this step.
Carefully, with a couple hot pads or oven mitts, start yanking the two halves apart. You'll need a fair amount of force, but it can be done. To help the situation, I put a LARGE philips screwdriver (round shaft) in the linkage eyelet for some leverage. I ended up pulling out the lower section, while leaving the rubber still intact in the upper section. Take a needle nose pliers and rip the rubber out of the upper section.
Step #3.
Now to get the sections centered properly, I used the top tip of the old rubber to act as a guide. Check these links from Ron Stygar website to see this top section.
http://www.unofficialbmw.com/e36/dri...ift_lever.html http://www.mz3.net/articles/143.html Using epoxy I essentially reassembled the entire unit, using only that top tip.
Rubber removed and reassembled on my all-metal E36 M3 lever....
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Step #4.
Fire up the hot glue gun, and have plenty of sticks ready. I think four standard 4"-5" sticks is enough. Tape over the open holes on the upper section, to keep liquid glue from oozing out. Turn the lever upside down and start squirting as much glue into the open cavity as possible. The glue won't pool at the bottom because it starts to harden on the way down. That's OK, we'll fix it later! Once you've filled it to the top, start another DEEP pot of boiling water. Ideally it'll be 6" deep minimum so you can stand the lever up vertically. Hold the lever in the boling water and the glue will start to re-melt. Now that the entire lever is hot, the glue will melt and pool cleanly at the bottom (the top really, since it's upside down).
The glue level will drop a lot, so you'll need to keep squirting glue in there as it all settles to the bottom. Keep going until it's full.
Step #5.
Take the oven mitts again, and pull the lever out. With only the upper tip epoxied down, the lever will still flop around while the glue's hot. Center it as perfectly as possible while the glue cools and hardens. Let it cool fully and you're done! That sucker is in there as hard as a rock! My only question is, will the glue soften and melt as the car heats up? Oh yeah, total cost? Somewhere in the 75¢ range.
That was a lot of writing for such a little project
Epoxy would probably be better. I soaked some hot glue in 151 degree F water and it gets rubbery at that point, but it defintely will not run or ooze. The softness it got to at 151 degrees is just slightly softer than the stock rubber filler. My guess is that the upper section of the shift lever won't get to 150 degrees.
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