I've replaced the plastic bushing that the shifter fits into in the console - it's a ball and socket arrangement. That has cleaned up some of the sloppiness in the shifter linkage. I've look around at information about adjusting the linkage, but nothing suggests anything else that might clean up the shifter. There's a couple of things I'm after - a serious vibration in the linkage while in 2nd and 4th gears that makes a lot of noise because the linkage is rattling on something, and significant side-to-side play in the shifter. From looking at the Clark's Garage shop manual about shifter linkage, it appears that there is a plastic part that might need to be replaced down by the transaxle. Does anyone have experience with that? Any idea how difficult it is to get to the intermediate and transaxle ****er linkage to adjust it or replace worn parts? Do I need to pull off the transaxle, or is there some way to get to the linkage?

 

You probably need to replace your shifter handle itself. The metal pin that slides into the shift rod (that runs back to the transaxle) will wear like an hourglass shape, and cause your sloppyness side to side. It is about a $45 part. Also, it can wear the inside of the shift rod itself where the shift lever pin slides into.

I would start there before going after the transaxle end. I haven't seen as many of those go bad as I have the shift lever.

 

The shifter looks like it's been replaced - it's pretty new looking, and has a Porsche parts sticker on it. The previous owner had rebuilt the transaxle and replaced the torque tube, and it looks like the shifter may have been replaced as part of that overhaul. I'll pull it apart and look for wear on the pin. I suppose that if there's wear on the sleeve that fits over the pin, all I can do is replace that shaft from the shifter to transaxle... What would be nice is if there was a way I could re-sleeve it with some kind of thin plastic sleeve to tighten it up a bit.

 

You can drill out the tube and insert a piece of brass 7/16" tubing from what I have heard. I have never tried it.

Just going to a short shifter may be the best solution for the transaxle end, since that would all be replaced.