While chatting with Joe at this year's ZCon, I was excited to learn that he was developing a novel mounting solution for the Z32 shifter. After a couple months of bothering him for updates, I finally had the pleasure of test fitting one of his new products. Everything fits properly with my combination of Woody's short-throw shifter and Z1 driveshaft, and I had a bit of clearance to spare. The solid shifter mount truly cleans up the feel of things. It does make the shifter vibrate a little more since it isn't as decoupled from the drivetrain, but that doesn't bother me so much as of yet. All things considered, I'm a believer. The first half of the process is pretty routine for most of us, but I figured I'd provide excessive photographic documentation regardless. One little disclaimer - my shifter was originally installed backwards. The 34th picture in this post is the first in which it is installed facing in the correct direction. I blame Jeff for this one, since I'd been reinstalling things as I'd found them. :) The installation is easier without test pipes on the car, although it can definitely be done without removing them. My afternoon's agenda also included swapping cats back off of my car, so I figured I might as well use the extra working space while I had it. I'm not sure the stock shifter bracket can be removed from below with the catalytic converters' heat shield in place. Woody mentioned to me that he was able to (barely) get his bracket out through the hole above, so it seems like that's an option as well. Naturally, things came packed nicely. Here are some close-up shots of the bracket itself, for those who have been interested. Using the day's preferred unit of measurement, one can see that the bracket is quite beefy. This had been my major concern before seeing the kit in person, but my worries subsided upon unwrapping everything from its packaging. As I said above, I found there to be more than adequate clearance between my Woody shifter and Z1 one-piece driveshaft. It's easy to align the shifter bracket from left to right by looking along the driveshaft. It's more difficult to do so with the heat shield and test pipes installed since the view is obstructed. You'll need a tool like this to properly apply torque to the four bolts that secure the bracket to the transmission, if you have a prototype kit like mine. Joe is now mailing lock washers to make this step easier. At this point I got educated (thanks to Joe) and turned my shifter around so that it'd be pointing the right way. :) The angle of my shifter was a little off until I readjusted the shifter bracket to account for turning the shifter to face forward. I got the car back up in the air last night to resolve the issue. The leftovers, minus a nut and washer that didn't make it into the photo. Joe's shifter boot plate a nice piece as well. I like that a foam gasket is included on the underside of the plate. The CV boot works remarkably well in this application. Everything was all finished up without much effort. It turned out to be a nice little afternoon project. Many thanks to Joe for sending me a kit to test fit in my car. More importantly, thanks to Joe for his research and development effort to bring such a nice new product to the community!
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