I've been out in the garage for awhile getting more and more pissed off and searched briefly without any luck. Here's the problem...

Out of nowhere, my shifter got harder that **** to move left and right. It goes from 2-3 easily, and I can pull or push VERY hard to get it to move left or right and it goes from 1-2 or 5-R easily again. With the car on or off (don't know if it matters) it feels like I'm going to snap something when trying to move the shifter left to allow me to go into first, second goes easy then I have to push hard again to get it to move right so I can get into 3rd and then 4th is easy again. Getting it to move to the far right is the hardest so I can get into 5th gear. WHAT'S WRONG???!!!!!!!!!

I took the center console assembly out to see if anything was binding against the linkage on the left (the one that controls side to side movement) and nothing is in the way. I removed to cotter pin on the left linkage to see if it was the actual shifter and no, with that removed and the linkage taken off I can once again move left and right easily.

EDIT: PROBLEM SOLVED BY POST 11...THANKS GUYS!!!!!!!!!!

 

Do you have any kind of short throw shifter ?
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Yes, it's been in for over a year now along with the in-car and under-the-hood shifter bushings.

 

Pull out the underhood bushings and see if they are binded or anything like that. I have the Kartboy underhood ones and after awhile my WORKS short shifter, got kinda hard to shift. So I greased the hell out of the ss kit but found it was still a bit hard. I took off the Kartboys, dunked it in grease and installed it again..... smooth as a baby's behind.

I can only imagine the metal ones binding much worst than the plastic ones. Good luck!

 

Is the throw 45% less than stock ?

Because I'm thinking one of your shift cables are binding up.
Since the angle of the cables are changed to get the short throw, it might have just wore out the coating inside the cables so there binding now.
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your shift cable is bent, happen to me, its just gonna get worse.

 

Sounds to me like your shifter bushings seized up. Do you have brass or aluminum under-hood bushings?

Get under the hood and try to remove your bushings from the posts on the tranny. If you can't then that's the culprit.

 

DING DING! So far that's where I'm at. I have the brass ones. I removed the cotter pin and now can't get the bushing off. Still trying....

 

Oh man, that's a big bummer then! The same thing happened to me.

Get it wet with some WD40 and try to work it loose. If it won't budge (not even with vice grips) you'll probably have to cut it off with a dremel like I did.

If you want to see how I attacked it with the dremel I can post a pic later of my mutiliated bushing.

Good luck! Let us know how it goes.

 

We've sprayed the crap out of it with stuff and it won't budge from the pin. I don't want to cut it since I don't have another one to replace it with. I'm on a break since my fingers are numb from trying to pry it off. We're moving to the clamps/vice grips now.

 

Have I ever said how much I love this site? Thank you guys for the help, turned out that one of the under-the-hood bushings was completely seized. Couldn't get it out by hand or with the tools I had so we made an AutoZone run and picked up a small pully-puller (see pic). Put it on, turned the knob and the bushing popped right off. After sanding it down with very fine sand paper and a generous amount of lithium grease it popped back on and moves freely. Not bad for a $20 part, I feel so relieved that's all it was!

 

Sweet dude, glad you got it off!!!

Here's how I got mine off. lol

 

Nice job man! I was gonna say take out the under-the-hood shifter bushings.

 

Wow, that's ONE way to do it!

 

where is under hood bushing locate at? is it shift base bushing(4) which comes with short shifter kit?
i might have to look up on mine too.