shoot me burn me hang do whatever you want but first answer this please. i'm new to the whole tuner thing and i have questions about the short throw shifters. how do they work when its a cable shift? am i just overlooking a simple concept or am i just flat out retarded. i figured i would ask and see if it was worth getting one.

they shorten the acctually "throw" the shifter has...making it easier to find gears and to shift.
our cars have such crappy engineered shifters from the factory that putting one in does WONDERS imo.
it makes it feel like a whole new car, not to mention making it much easier to shift and find the gears when blowing through them.

im my experience ive driven a 97 z24, i simply just cut 3" off the top of it, and put the knob back on (that seemed to work awesome as well) BUT if you want a true shorter throw...go with a b&m.




White 98'Z-alive n kickn
Black 97'Z-down for the count

lol...what if i just grip it lower?

same kind of idea, but you're still dealing with a pivot point. i believe most short throw shifters are actually designed with a different axis on which they rotate, making the bottom move faster as well as the top being shorter. i could be completely wrong, but this is my understanding of the situation



JBO Stickers! Get yours today!

Rich Grayo Jr. wrote:same kind of idea, but you're still dealing with a pivot point. i believe most short throw shifters are actually designed with a different axis on which they rotate, making the bottom move faster as well as the top being shorter. i could be completely wrong, but this is my understanding of the situation

yeah thats the same way i understand it in my 04 cavvy i traded the stock one out for a short throw and i can make the tires spin yeah spin shifting into second b4 i could only chirp them. what the short throw pretty much does though on my car is it makes the shaft itseflf a few inches shorter and replaces a few of the parts with upgraded ones instead of plastic so i would highly reccomend getting a b&m it helps soooooo much if ur looking for a performance feel or a show look

The short fall with our shifter housing is we dont have any more distance on the bottom of the cage to actually lengthen the lower pivot point. All you can do is shorten the top of the pivot arm....thats what B&M shifters and all of them do. If you wanted to do it right you would get a B&M...shim up the cage and lengthen the lower pivot arm....this would give you a great short throw.....but the B&M is nice...I have it.....I feels good but doesn't really shorten the throw, just shortens the upper pivot arm, which shortens the anglular travel up top.

wow. so no real difference from cutting it then...

at least for ours... i mean yeah, it looks like a pretty billet piece, but to be able to get the same advantage with some shop tools an a little time... im not too impressed i must say...


Edited 1 time(s). Last edited Saturday, October 28, 2006 7:13 PM


JBO Stickers! Get yours today!

best $60 i ever spent on my car. EVER. buy one for sure, dont get the b&m one either, way overpriced. I did the ebay special and works exactly the same, i used the factory shift knob too so you wouldnt have been able to see the b&m anyway if i got that shifter. just shop ebay. I had a friend sell his b&m for an ebay one because we held them side to side and they were exactly the same. Ebay FTW

I'd forgotten what an improvement the short throw is. I drove a stock shifter recently and couldn't believe how sloppy it felt compared to my B&M.. IMO, considering the relatively low cost, B&M or whatever, this is one of the best upgrades you can make.

^^^All of the above posts are very correct...I never said dont buy one. Its worth the exsperience, I hav ea B&M myself...I like the billet alum. knob.....that and my stock knob was F'ed up. B&M is great except without tinted windows in the summer.........it gets HOT!!!

Vincent Morris wrote:best $60 i ever spent on my car. EVER. buy one for sure, dont get the b&m one either, way overpriced. I did the ebay special and works exactly the same, i used the factory shift knob too so you wouldnt have been able to see the b&m anyway if i got that shifter. just shop ebay. I had a friend sell his b&m for an ebay one because we held them side to side and they were exactly the same. Ebay FTW

I must add one point to this post, on 2000-up Cavaliers, the shift knob is pressed onto the end of the shaft of the shifter, and to remove it, you either have to use a helluva lot of force to twist and yank it off, or resort to slicing it up in pieces to get it off, either way, it is usually unusable again. Also, I don't believe anyone but B&M makes a short shifter for the 2k+ Cavs, I could be mistaken there. I have one, and I totally love it. It DOES get steamy hot in the summer, and when its cold, it gets slippery, even though the knob is bone dry.

to take my stock knob off i took the whole shifter assembly, put it in a vice grasping on the metal shifter shaft. upside down. put a dull chisel on the plastic reverse lockout slider, hit it a few times, shift knob popped off easily. and ebay is the way to go, just as good as b&m without the name. i even got an aluminum shift knob thats a blank.

I just posted this in the other thread but here....

Darkstars wrote:the shifter itself is the same lenth, the big metal ball looking part towards the bottom of the shaft, thats the pivot point. if you move the ball further up the shaft the shaft itself sits lower down but the big thing is having more shaft below the ball, the more shaft below the ball means it take less movement up top to pivot the bottom.



for exampe..


stock - bottom--> o---0-------------o <--- Top

short - bottom--> o-------0---------o <--- Top


the big 0 is the pivot point. make sence how move the pivot up means less work to move the bottom just as far?