Factory Short Shifter welds broke

[450knotOffice]

Well, now it looks like another one of us, Alex (PRE-H20) has had this happen to him.

I haven't seen his shifter yet, but he's desribing exactly what happened to all of us. I'll pull his shifter out on Friday and we'll take a look.

[911pcars]

Humor me as I play a Porsche assembly engineer.

We've got a shift lever that's supposed to fit into a shift lever mechanism. If we weld the individual pieces together BEFORE it's assembled, there's no guarantee (even with jigs) the welded tab on the lever will fully align with the 5th and Rev. tabs on the carrier plate. How do we achieve perfection?

After a few German ales (Grande, dark of course), light bulb is ON. The assembly line will receive the shift housings, fully assembled but without the shift lever. Hans and his team have decided (pre-Japanese study group) to dip the end of each shift lever into a time-sensitive vat of special epoxy (brewed in Sindelfingen) and install the lever into each passing shift assembly, making sure the lever is in the 5th or Rev. gear position. This ensures the tabs are thus in complete and full heel-clicking alignment.

After the requisite curing period, Klaus and his QC team, along with special tool #911.001.456.00 (aka 1.67Kg GVH or Großer Verdammter* Hammer) perform final adjustments. Ouila! or Gemacht! as we might pretend to say in German.

It's good for about 25 years, give or take 10.

Sherwood

* This word is as close as I could get from a free Internet translation service. For $5, they provide the real word in a plain brown wrapper.

[rs6er]

Slightly off topic... but. I bought my short shifter in the early 80s from the company that made (makes) the PMO Weber setups at the time. To install their short shifter, you had to remove the factory shifter, heat the base over a stove until you could pull the shifter shaft out of the receiver, epoxy in the new lever with the supplied epoxy, and put it back together. Mine has remained intact for over 20 years since then.

[450knotOffice]

Epoxy is sounding better and better, if done right. I'll see what Alex thinks about that.

[911pcars]

"Epoxy is sounding better and better, if done right."

A permanent solution is better, IMHO. Tack weld it.

Sherwood

[450knotOffice]

Well, I went down to Alex's place today and took a look at his situation. It turns out that his shifter is fine - solid as a rock (and it's original 1974 vintage too). I decided to pull the cover over his shift coupler off in order to have a look and found the problem right away. It turns out that his coupler bushings had disintegrated to the point where they were basically gone. The two bushings were broken into about 15 small pieces and most of those pieces had fallen out of the coupler so that the two halves of the coupler just flopped around like a spoon in a glass.

He's ordered a new set of bushings from our host for $9 and they'll be shipped Monday.

Boy was he relieved. He thought he might be looking at a big dollar transmission fix.

[PatrickB]

Yeah... It should be good for another 300,000 miles now...

[84porsche]

Originally posted by PatrickB
Yeah... It should be good for another 300,000 miles now...

Give or take a few oil leaks.

[450knotOffice]

Ohhhhhhhhh......!

(his engine is bone dry, btw)

[PRE-H20]

HEHE..... ya i can make to another 300K..... hehe.....

im waiting for the parts as we speak,....... i very appreciative to scott for his help,.......... i hope the clay bar on your cab is still looking good,... the door moldings came out GREAT......

hehe and thanks to PKASSO i am bone dry..... hehe anyone can follow me and have a clean window...... chris?......................