[chaf]

My car came to me with a non-factory short shift, which has the effect of narrowing the side-to-side travel of the shifter and incidentally making the official adjustment procedure not quite work. You might have some factor somewhere that's giving you the same grief; personally, I think the official adjustment procedure is not ideal for any 915 car.

Here's how I adjust mine:

1) Shift into fifth.
2) Loosen shift rod coupler.
3) Position shift lever at desired front-rear position for fifth gear.
4) Tighten coupler. Gently twist the tranny side of the coupler toward the right (counterclockwise as viewed facing rearwards) while you tighten for maximum "reach" into the 1-2 gate.
5) Make sure you can wiggle the tranny side of the coupler a little.
6) Shift into first. Make sure you can still wiggle the tranny side of the coupler a little.
7) Repeat step 6 for second and reverse.

The first time you do it, you may have to repeat the F-R adjustment in Step 3 once or twice to position it so it engages the fifth-reverse interlock thingy correctly.

To my way of thinking, the margin of error on adjustment is finest in fifth gear, since it's spring-loaded toward the left and also held to the right by the little rail that it engages. In the other four gears, you're just stirring the stick around in a big hole. As an added benefit, using this technique, the spring tension and rail hold the lever in place while you're messing with the coupler in back - thus making it harder to brush against it wrong and knock it out of position.