JHM Installed Wrong by Shop, please help ?!?!

[mbgt72]

First off this is a competent shop that deals exclusively with European cars and does a fair bit of racing such as radicals and service some scca race cars. So I do believe the shop is credibly, but they never had installed a JHM shifter, and Audi's are probably one of the smaller categories of European cars that they work on.

Ok, so I bought a JHM Extra Short Shifter and had a shop put it in for me today. Got the car back and the distance and feel of the throws are awesome, but something felt kinda weird with it. I reall struggled getting the pressure right for putting it in reverse as it seemed very different from stock, but I now can get it pretty much fine.

I first noticed they reused the attachment that holds the knob on the shifter b/c after a while it felt a little loose, and b/c the screw tightener piece that JHM gives you was still in my box.

Second I saw they didn't use the provided plastic bushings that go on the bottom rails of the shifter, (sorry for not knowing the technical names, if you need more clarification then I'll try my best) which I was a little annoyed about, but isn't the end of the world. However the play in the gears still feels about the same side to side as stock, I'm guessing that it is caused by them not replacing it with the new bushings provided (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Well I decided I'd put the screw tightener on to hold the shift knob in place tight, that's when I noticed the flat part and the notch are on the passenger side, not the drivers side! Yes the shifter felt kinda forward from the get go, but since I've never had a short shifter before I wasn't really sure. I can still go in all the gears fine, but was wondering if this could cause any damage?

Also it feels kind of like going from 1st to 2nd is more of a slight angle from front right to back left, and for all the gears. It's kind of like if you were to look from above at the diagram on the shift knob, imagine the knob turned slightly clockwise for all the gears. I'm taking it that this is most likely due to the fact that the shifter has a slight bend in it laterally, and now it is backwards.

So I'm planning on saying something to the shop owner as they charged 2 hours of labor. And I'm fairly DIY savvy, but with how many issues people have had doing the fine tune adjustment, I decided I'd rather let a shop do it.

My question is do you think that the Shifter was flipped from JHM if that is possible? I think I've read before about something like this happening before, but wasn't quite sure. I'm thinking that (not positive and please correct me) that the stock shifter has the slight bend forward when installed as opposed to how JHM says to install with the knotch to the driver and the bend going to the rear of the car. Honestly I'm fairly impressed that they could install it backwards and still be able to go into all the gears. When I had the Shift boot up I even watched and it does have clearance in every gear.


So what do I need to do? If it's going to cause damage then that's my first and foremost concern! I didn't really want to do the install due to the tuning and not having all the tools on hand. I would like to have the new plastic bushings on to get rid of the lateral play, but it wouldn't be worth it to me to only do this due to having to readjust and basically install it again myself.


Thanks guys for helping out a younger new member.

[earhythmic]

I posted this on a thread yesterday:

I had the exact same problem installing mine. accidentally put it in backwards. Things to look for are:

make sure the "bend" in the shifter is pointed to the rear of the car (easy to realize this)

here's the annoying one-

the part that connect the JHM to the car's shifter linkage is actually cocked slightly to the right. look at your stock shifter really carefully and you'll see what I'm talking about. When I first put mine in it was cocked the wrong way (to the left) and to get everything correct I actually had to unbolt that piece and flip it. After that, everything was cake.

[mbgt72]

Yea, I saw that post of yours. I was going to put all this under that post, but just decided to start a new one. I called the shop, and they're going to be closed till monday, so I guess I'm stuck till then. I'm just hoping that they will admit that it is wrong and that they should fix it and free of course. Thanks for the help, and if anyone knows more I'd really appreciate it i.e. am I going to cause damage. Sorr for causing a repost, but this really annoyed me.

[earhythmic]

here's some pics I took of my shifter after I noticed the angle thing. I wanted to make sure nobody else had to make this mistake!




try popping the shift boot up, get a flashlight, and look really carefully. see if the angle thing is the problem. When mine was installed backwards I experienced that crazy diagonal shifting problem too. Thought that was inherent of the JHM and was about to go back to stock if that was the case. The stock one is pretty fool proof because it wont allow you attach it upside down, but the JHM is machined identically on both sides, making it VERY easy to put in upside down/backwards and not know it.

[mbgt72]

update:
Got the shop to fix it on monday, got it back today, LOVE IT! The shifter is truly magnificent and improves on the stock in every manner. I'm really glad I got the extra short throw and wouldn't dream of buying the normal short throw after having mine now.

Thanks for the help, and sorry to be yet another posting about the JHM SS shifter, but I thought it deserved some props from another happy customer.