shifter issue? will not go into 2nd gear.

[kobeultreras01]

What are your guy's thoughts? I think I need to buy a new shifter. So from inside the car, I could not get the car to go into first or second gear. I dropped the car off at the dealer because we know one of the mechanics there. He looked at it and got the car to go into every gear from under the car by like manually putting the car in gear by hand from the linkage I believe. He was able to get the car to go into every gear from inside the car except second gear and said the shifter felt loose/ sloppy. I'm thinking I just need a whole new shifter, and I am thinking about just replacing it with a new short-throw shifter. Will a new shifter fix the issue?

[CrickiKaze]

It could be the ball joint linkage on the tranny that connects to the shift rod, it is plastic. Even if the interior was worn, then you would have a higher chance of having issues in multiple "gears" or it would poorly engage all the gears IMO. The ball linkage is more suspect to me. You can try this out from JHM but I'm not against throwing in a STS.
https://jhmotorsports.com/products/s...d-rs4-all.html

[Zolli]

I have the short throw shifter and nearly all the other JHM shifter parts. They are very nice; if you enjoy driving a manual transmission, they will improve your experience. Note that installing the short shifter to catch all the gears is pretty fussy, but once it’s in, it’s great.

That said, I’m trying to think of probable wear parts in the OEM assembly, and I agree with Crickikaze that it’s probably the ball joint which is what connects the OEM shifter linkage rod to the transmission. It’s somewhat exposed, more so than anything in the interior. An OEM replacement is probably going to be outrageous sums. The shifter stick itself has a plastic ball in a ring, and then the whole assembly slides on two rails. Could be a rail is having excess friction (doubt it) or the ball / ring is worn, but I would imagine that would affect all gears.

I can tell you that gears 1 and 2 were the greatest struggle to get right when installing the short throw shifter. That’s because the stick has connections to the two linkage rods that have their ends pop through the shifter base. It’s these connections that have to be just right, in relation to where you want the stick to rest on the rails, that makes it fussy to dial in. The shifter is connected to the linkage rods by two bolts, one for each rod. They have to be pretty tight. If the one on the left came loose for some reason, that would definitely make 1-2 shifting harder / impossible. You have to take the boot off anyway; might as well check or try some adjustments.

Here’s JHM’s video on how to make adjustments. Might just solve your issue.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HOm9gQ...ature=youtu.be