Ok, so my review is long overdue, and I told Ed that I would give a fully comprehensive review of the product.
Day 1:
I got the shifter after much anticipation, and installed it in the car. (what a PITA that is btw). I loved it. It was great to feel the shifter go from gear to gear, and be able to see it at the same time, knowing what gear I was in, where the shifter was, etc.
Day 3:
I let my father drive the car. The car is stored at his house, and he has free use of it (what can I say, I'm a good kid
) He came back from a 30 minute drive, all backroads, and I asked his opinion; he HATED it. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why - so I had him explain the problem. The issue was he was shifting to 2nd gear, but not in the correct plane within the shift gate. I decided to take off the shift boot, and take a look around.
The gate actually allowed shifting into 2nd gear with the "wing" that's welded to the shift lever both inside and outside the gate. The "wing" staying on the outside of the gate is proper, while inside was not correct, yet still possible.
I called and spoke with Ed - he told me to adjust the coupler (which I had done 2 weeks prior) and if that didn't work, I could adjust the position of the gate on the shifter housing itself. I readjusted the coupler, and that didn't seem to be my problem.
So, I got to work on the gate. I played around with the positioning a little bit. I also mistakenly overtightened one of the nuts holding the gate in place, which spread the "fork" and messed things up a bit. I bent things back into place, and actually swapped out the nuts that Ed provided with some flange nuts (As he and I discussed, this seemed to be a great solution to let the nuts go further down on the threads like the standard nut does, while covering the surface area on the "fork" that a washer would have.
So now the gate is in position. For the most part, the shifter is working as expected. However, I can still slide into 2nd gear inside the "wing". Out comes the rubber mallet, and a set of needle nose pliers.
With a tad bit of tweaking to the gate's "wing" with the mallet, I bent the gate very slightly. I then used the pliers to turn the edge of the "wing" attached to the shift lever outward. Basically, it made it impossible to shift into 2nd gear without the lever being in the absolute proper position. In my opinion, it also made it a lot easier to find that proper position.
Day 27:
Both my father and I continue to drive the Carrera, and what a pleasure! The slight tweaks I made to a fine piece of engineering make shifting this 915 an absolute dream!
Thank you Ed, for developing and helping me with such a great product!