1995 300zx 2+2 manual shift control lever rebuild

[newbie1]

Decided to DIY my wobbly shift control lever before I drive my recently purchased vehicle again after the purchase. (No, the wobbly control lever didn't throw up a bunch of red flags on my pre-purchase drive because I was in a "want" mode, and nothing fell off of the car onto the road during the test drive. Car has new tires on stemless rims. What could possibly go wrong?) All the bolts and nuts holding the shift controls to their supports were tight. Control lever had no bushings when I unbolted it from the control rod. Found the collar sitting in the "V" by the left exhaust pipe, but I don't think I dropped it since "everyone" says, "Don't drop anything while disassembling the control lever from the control rod!"

I want to replace the control lever bearing and dust boots. Slathering silicon on the dust boots and bearing doesn't get them over the tube on the end of the control lever that bolts to the control rod without ripping the dust boots, I'm thinking, so I want to unscrew the lower part of the control lever from its upper part . Anyone ever done that? Without leaving pipe wrench marks? Does one put the lower part in a vise and use a pipe wrench above the socket to unscrew the upper control lever part from the lower control part to put in a new bearing assembly, and upper and lower dust boots? Or, did you just buy the complete control lever from Nissan? I've already bought the bearing assembly. I plan to use five ball bearings and two stainless steel thrust washers I bought to replace the two bushings and their collar.

Have been using part names as listed on Page MT-11 in the 1995 Nissan 300ZX Service Manual.

[DCaff300ZX]

Personally I bought the shifter rebuild kit from Z1 and followed the how-to's from several places such as tt.net and roboZ, etc. plus the fsm. This way it's a known procedure rather than trying to jury-rig something, which requires that you know what you are doing and how, and that it WILL work and not destroy/damage things along the way. Sorry but I can't help with any other advise for your problem...

[newbie1]

Thanks for your advice.

[itsa300zx]

The oem shifter is a two piece design but not meant to be disassembled. The two pieces are glued together via rubber insulator. The lower dust boot slides off easily from the bottom. remainder of the rebuild kit (plastic ball retainer, upper dust boot and metal cup) can be removed from the top, once the leather boot retainer ring is removed. This ring is just pressed onto the top shaft.

Hope that helps.

BTW, I rebuild oem shifters ans modify them into short shifters as a hobby.
I sell just the roller bearings too along with the full shifter, see link:

http://www.kijiji.ca/v-transmission-dri ... nFlag=true

[newbie1]

itsa300zx, thanks for your explanation. I was able to remove the leather boot retainer ring, and put it back on, after putting on a new plastic ball retainer and attendant dust boots. I put six ball bearing assemblies, and a piece of 0.002" stainless steel shim stock between the shifter tube and the ball bearing assemblies, in the shifter tube. Not as elegant as your solution, but seems to be relatively tight with no noticeable clearance stacking sloppiness attributable to only the gap between the inner diameter of the ball bearing assemblies and the connector bolt. If I need to do another shifter, I will look you up, as I like the roller/needle bearings solution better because the original metal bushing/tube can be reused.