T5 Shifter Mods

[gerg 10,871]

Everyone's pretty familiar with the good old Borgie 5-speed but I wanted to share a couple of tweaks I've done to mine.

 

First of all, the shift throw. From a performance driver's point of view, the stock Ford shifter leaves a bit to be desired in this department. All of the aftermarket T5 short-shifters use the same concept: move the pivot point higher to reduce required movement at the gear knob. This also firms up the shift. I went with the same concept and this is how I went about it:

I've kept the shifter body stock but made up some Nylon plates to space it up by about an inch.

To make the stick longer, I dismantled, cut and extended the bottom part by the same amount as the thickness of the spacers. I used a cut up grade 8 bolt and MIGed it in. Voila.... Short-shifter!

 

One drama was the clearance issues inside the tunnel on my EF once I spaced the shifter body up, but a hammer soon fixed that. If I were to do it all again, I'd ditch the spacers and cut and shut the housing itself to extend the ball pivot upwards. Now the gate....

 

The one thing that shitted me the most about my T5 was the 2-3 shift. It would always get hung up on the gate going into 3rd when trying to snap a quick change. Left me looking like a dickhead when trying to beat that shitty Honda at the lights and end up missing 3rd gear.

 

Part of the problem is in the fact that these boxes are a yank design purely with left hand drive in mind. The shift gates are straight up and down with very little lead-in from neutral position. In a LHD car the 2-3 shift action is more natural in that you're pushing the stick directly away from you. In RHD, you're pushing the stick across your body as well as further away, resulting in less strength and precision.This is how the stock shift guide plate looks:

As you can see the gates are the same top to bottom (except going into 5th) yet nobody ever shifts from 4th to 1st. Instead of resembling a "H" pattern, it should really be more like a "Z". A more suitable shape would have a chamfered gate on 2nd toward 3rd and also on 3rd coming from 2nd.

 

Remember the pattern is reversed on the bottom side of the gearstick. 1st gate is bottom right, 2nd top right, 3rd is bottom centre.

 

I got to work with my Dremel and this is the result:

 

I've actually taken a bee's dick more off since the photo but you get the drift. It has helped a lot but the problem also lies inside the box where the gates on the fork selector might also be a little tight. Proof will be in the pudding when this goes behind my Clevo, hopefully very soon.

 

Any other tweaks people know of please share

[nos2 751]

That's awesome man!

[gerg 10,871]

Ghetto is the word I'd use, but cheers anyway

[nos2 751]

Have a few shifters here if you want, ghetto master

[gerg 10,871]

Oh good I can fuck up a few and not feel too bad

[nos2 751]

It's good to see someone fckin with a factory shifter to improve. Think I've got 3 laying around here somewhere. Welcome to them if you like.

[gerg 10,871]

Cheers if only I had 3 boxes to fit them to

[adrianphu123 73]

one of the simpliest mods i accidentally stumbled upon is to replace the stock shifter stick with an aftermarket one.

 

The factory shifter stick mounts with a rubber isolator which introduces a bit of play but when using an aftermarket one and mounting it metal to metal onto the shifter, eliminates that play.

[gerg 10,871]

Yeah Adrian I did similar with the stocker. Those rubber bushes get soft and floppy with age (as I have) so I pissed mine off and solid-mounted the stick. If you like , you can even install a spacer block to bring the stick closer to you as Falcons are a wide car and it's a bit of a reach to shift some gears.

[adrianphu123 73]

oh and loctite the bolts, as they will come loose when you least want them to.