Gear shift bushes

[brett30]

My car has been suffering for a while now with poor gear changes, and had the common problem of being able to select reverse without pushing down (ball at the bottom of the gear stick probelm) which I have changed. The problem I still have is with play in the gear leaver, and I was told that I need to replace the bushes in the meachanism.

I have seen kits on ebay, but what exactly do they comprise off, and what bushes need to be changed?

brett

[rubjonny]

The ebay kists come with everything you need except the relay shaft ball cover.  Once you have the kit in your hands and look at what you have it's pretty obvious what needs to go where.

The only thing to watch out for is to replace the big orange bush you need to take the clamp off the end of the gear shaft which will bugger up your alignment unless you get it back on just right.  I didn't bother as you also have to drill out 2 rivits to get the old bush out!

The relay shaft ball cover also needs to be changed to reduce play in the lever, best to get them from VAG as it is a hard wearing part.  Also you can get an uprated part over standard from here:
http://www.4crawler.com/Diesel/ForSale/ShiftLinkage.shtml#A2RelayShaftBallCover

[Gambit]

the new relay shaft ball cover will remove any back n forth play in the linkage

VAG wont sell you a relay shaft ball cover on its own. they make you buy the complete relay shaft! which is about ?32

i bought a replacement relay ball cover from that link a couple of weeks ago. cost me ?6 inc p&p and arrived within 5 days - which aint bad considering its coming from the US!!

[rubjonny]

Damn oh well, just get the missinglinkz part then

[Helios_Blue_Valver]

Just rebuilt the shift linkage in my 16v MK2. New shifter ball socket, new bushes both end of the shift rod, new bushes on the transmission linkage and new short link. Replaced the relay shaft a year ago. What a difference. Feels like new now. Added a mk3 weighted rod from VW as well. Bit of a pain in the a55 pulling the shifter out of the car but well worth it. I have the part numbers for the bushes and what not if anyone needs them.

Brad

[...joe]

yeah hard work getting the shifter out as you said, but worth it mine was funked! when you went to put it in first it often fell into reverse...you know what i mean. i didn't bother drilling out the rivets i just poked out the orange bush and poked the new one back in.

[Helios_Blue_Valver]

Same thing i did. One word of advice though. When you go to VW, ETKA doesn't show the front bush on its own. They just list the whole braket assemblly that holds the relay shaft and the bushing. If you look under the part in ETKA though there is a bushing listed as a sub assembly (h3ll of alot cheaper too!!) tht is the one you are after.