2nd to 3rd gear lock out?

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12-02-2011, 08:16 AM

#11

JIM5.0

5th Gear Member

Join Date: Jul 2010

Location: Texas

Posts: 4,404

Quote:

Originally Posted by JAJ

They do that. Ford's official answer is that the gates are narrow and drivers miss them occasionally. However, there are many posters on this and other forums who've driven stick shift cars for decades and who are having this problem too.

As far as I can determine, and mine only did it very rarely, is that it's actually a shift linkage issue. The engine moves on its mounts, the linkage shifts around and suddenly you can't find the gate. Give it "a moment" to settle while you're in neutral, and the gate comes back. Ford, at least so far, hasn't released any TSB's or design updates to fix it, and so if you have the symptoms, your choices seem to be to live with it or to buy an aftermarket shifter, of which the MGW is the current leading contender.

I have the MGW in my car now, but I haven't been back to the race track to find out if the missing third gear problem is actually solved. Nice piece though.

Good point about the shifting linkages and the engine/tranny assembly twisting out of position under harder accelerations.
This is the drawback of the S197 over the previous generation car, the SN95: you have to mount the shifter remotely rather than integrally on the tranny. The SN95 basically had the shifter right on top or nearly right on top of the tranny so the engine torque twisting the tranny out of position to cause missed shifts was minimized. With remote shifters, the tranny twists out of position form engine torque, but the shifter stick stays where its at, thus the gate "moves" out of position for missed shifts.

Here is an example of an integrally mounted shifter mounted on the tranny:
http://paceperformance.com/i-5160024...nsmission.html

Here is an example of a remotely mounted shifter:
http://image.musclemustangfastfords....ansmission.jpg

A comparison of a remote shifter and integrally mounted shifter side by side:
http://image.musclemustangfastfords....comparison.jpg

12-03-2011, 07:44 PM

#12

JAJ

2nd Gear Member

Join Date: Nov 2010

Location: BC

Posts: 244

I agree with you on the remote shifter thing. It's not that remote shifters don't work, it just that this one on the MT-82 isn't quite remote enough. Porsche's shifters reach back a long way and they work fine. The MT-82 shifter is close enough that it didn't get the extensive engineering required for a long-reach version, but it's long enough that it's not as good as a direct-shift.