While I have the interior out of our 92 Camaro, I discovered that the rubber boot for the shifter was torn, and apparently leaking. I'd like to replace that, if possible. Has anyone done it, and how does it get done? It looks like the shifter is swedged to the shifter mount plate, so taking it apart is not apparent, nor does it look easy. I have found a T5 'rubber' on some web site that supplies transmission parts to the S10 crowd. It looks a bit different, but I'm thinking it can be used. Do you 'simply'. stretch the boot over the shifter lever and hope it doesn't rip?

Additionally, anyone have a P/N for the gasket for the shifter mount? It was RTVed on there, but when I was cleaning that mess off, I also had to scrape some gasket material off, so there at least used to be a gasket there. Thanks.

 

For the rubber boot that holds in the bowl of oatmeal that connects the shifter handle to ... something equally floppy, I'd recommend something along these lines. https://www.hanlonmotorsports.com/pr...o-firebird-t5/

I've seen ALOT of T-5s butt NEVER seen a gasket on ANY of them ANYWHERE. Not the shifter, not the cover plate, not the extension housing, not the clutch gear bearing retainer. Never even heard of such a thing. Sounds like maybe some random PO cut out a piece of sheet gasket material and put it on there for some reason beyond my meager understanding. No idea why anybody would do that butt w/e, people do stuff all the time that I can't figure out why. People are weird.

 

There was definitely some old, OEM-looking gasket there at one time. The stuff on top. of it was orange RTV. I was asking because my initial. searches turned up little in the way of OEM-looking replacements. I did find some home-made-looking gasket online so have been wondering if I could just make my own. You're saying there's. NO gasket, or sealant there at all? A couple of exploded view diagrams I. found online didn't show one, either. If nothing's required, I'll just bolt it back together. Two of the bolts were loose, which, I. guess, could cause some leakage, especially in an autocross situation. That, and the ripped dust boot.

The shifter is actually not that bad, especially for old-OEM-quality parts. Since this car is pretty much retired from any competition, and even daily-driving, I'd like to keep it that way. So I may try sliding a replacement dust boot over the shifter lever and go from there. If it rips, then maybe consider a replacement shifter. We have a Pro5.0 shifter on the SVO, and it's very nice. The only issue I have with that one is that the lever thread is different than the SVO-specific handle. I replaced the handle with an SVT one, which looks kinda OEM, but anyone who knows those cars will know.

 

Nope. Mighta been a gasket there; mighta "looked" however; but wasn't OEM.

Nope. Didn't say that. What I said was, there was no gasket. OEM, it had black ordinary type silicone. The whole transmission used that and nothing else. The shiny clearish (except of course black) kind. There's not really any fluid up there anyway, doesn't need much in the way of sealing.

Yup. When I put a Hurst shifter into my car, first a T-5 one in maybe 85 then later a T-56 one in around 02, the threads on the shifter handles were smaller and finer than the OEM. I simply made a bushing. Took a bolt that had the same threads as the OEM handle (which was about 14mm or some such), drilled & tapped the center of it to fit the handle (3/8"-24 I think), cut off a suitable amount of it, put some Loctite on the handle threads, screwed the bushing onto the handle until it was even with the end, waited an hour or 2 to set up, and screwed the OEM pleather ball down on the bushing. Same bushing fit both handles, even; just pulled it off of the T-5 one and put it on the other. Looking at it you almost couldn't tell it wasn't stock except that the handle was shorter.

 

I have the black RTV, so will use that. It looked like there really wasn't much up there to spill. Ordered a dust boot. We'll see. The top of the lever was rusty. MANY years of autocrossing in Texas heat and humidity with sweaty driver paws all over it took their toll. I hit it with some Scotchbrite and then some black epoxy paint yesterday. Dam stuff isn't yet set! If the sun ever breaks out of the clouds, I may set it out to soak up some UV.

The lever on the Pro5.0 shifter on the SVO is M12X1.75. The factory shifter is M12X1.5, so getting any. kind of bushing there is difficult. M12X1.5 thread on a shifter lever is not common..... at all. Since the SVT handle is leather covered, and the proper thread, AND had a 5-speed pattern embossed in it, I'm using that. I could swap back to the OEM shifter, but have kind of gotten used to the Pro5.0 unit in that car. The factory shifter, even though it's a Hurst, was not that nice (LOTs of rubber in it to mitigate 4-cylinder vibrations and noise). Even though the shifter in the B4C is not Pro5.0, it shifts like cutting through butter with a hot knife. It's really nice! Amazingly so. All I would gain would be a shorter throw, but since it's going to be a 'nice day driver', the shift throw doesn't matter.

 

The factory shifter isn't a Hurst, that I know of. It's a total POS. Nothing even remotely like the Hurst Comp Plus I put in, in 85. I've never had a Pro 5.0 but they have a good reputation around here with those who have. GM has never used Hurst shifters in anything I know of, except for that abominable "his n hers" POS, aka "Dual Gate" in the aftermarket, that they put in certain 60s muscle cars w T-400s mostly. Certainly no manual trans shifters.

Hard to believe somebody autocrossed a car for "many years" with that still in it. That's clearly some form of obligatory self-mutilation and psychological trauma. No thank you please. I busted my knuckles on my dash when I still had my one of those. What CRAP.

 

The SVO came with a Hurst shifter. It was replaced with a Pro5.0.

The Camaro has the OEM GM shifter, and yes, it shifts very well. You usually only use first and second gears in an autocross situation, but I did DD this car for many years (+/-5 or 6?), and absolutely LOVE the way it shifts. We also competed in this car in F Stock, so no shifter changes are allowed. We didn't really need one, anyway.

Getting into reverse can get a bit 'grindy' at times, but when that happens, you just pop up into 5th and then to reverse.

 

OK, so not GM. Not relevant to what I had to say.

Of course. Same as any other manual transmission whose Reverse isn't synchronized. Any forward gear will do; all you have to do, is stop the clutch disc from spinning, which shifting into any forward gear will accomplish, in a T-5. I've been driving manual transmissions since ... well, let's not go there in detail ... a REALLY LONG time ago, as in, I can speak of it in terms of a century, so it's completely natural to me. For that matter, 1st didn't even used to be synchronized; you used to have to double-clutch to get into first at any speed above about 4 - 5 mph. I often forget that not everybody has that experience.

Yeah I guess that's true... lots of sanctioned type of racing works that way, where ANY modifications of some particular sort, render you ineligible to compete in some lower class. Ya gotta step up to a higher class to run them. Every kind of racing has its own list of legal modifications for a given class, and unless ya wanna race people with more cubic dollars (and therefore more modifications) than yourself, you're kinda stuck with it.

 

I've had a manual since I got my 1972 Trans Am with a M22 all the way back in '75. That one was fun, too, with the straight-cut gears.

Yes, on the limitations. That, and it really shifts nice, so no incentive to change anything there. If we autocross the Mistake again, we'd probably run it in C Prepared, where we run a 3rd Gen Trans Am now, just because of the 'restomod' modifications we'd made to it. Mount some Hoosier slicks on the factory SVO wheels and go hooning.

Since we race in C Prepared for points, the B4C would probably be in CP, also, but again, we have no incentive to change the shifter. That's what class we drove our '12 Caprice 9C1 AND 2010 Tahoe PPV in.

 

Sun finally came out. Put the sticky shifter outside and that seems to have helped things. Will check tomorrow. Still WOP.

 

The dust boot from Core Shifters arrived. It slipped over the shifter lever with a little help from silicone grease. All done. I piped some black gasket-maker RTV through a small hole in the provided nozzle and bolted everything down. All done, with this part of the project, anyway.

 

So I gotta ask, what's with the bricks in the footwells?