Reply to "Shifter gate adjustment"

One big drawback to using the stock steel shift gate: the hard chrome plated gate fingers wear a slot in the softer shift-stick, due to vibration & combined spring pressure from both the ZF detent and the redundant shift-box detent. That's why we started cutting the fingers off stock gates, which led to vendor-made aluminum gate-surrounds. I've seen many severely worn shift sticks and a couple that broke in two during fast shifts. New shift sticks are not cheap!

One stock shift stick on a late model (GT5-S) was found to be made of multiple layers of thin steel edge-welded together, while Ford-era sticks are one piece. They interchange on any Pantera. Both kinds are unrepairable if broken. I've also seen the threaded knob end break off from drag-race shifting done poorly. Heaven knows what the ZF synchros in that car looked like!

If you have a badly worn but not broken shift-stick, it can be removed and repaired using TIG welding and stainless rod to fill in the worn area(s). Once ground down and polished, the ss weld area is almost invisible so rechroming is unnecessary. TIG is specified to keep weld heat low around the welded area, minimizing annealing of the steel and the blue color that comes from high heat.