Sloppy shifter

[phillthy]

Is there a diy on how to refresh a sloppy shifter on an e21? There’s a lot of play when I’m in gear. I want to fix the problem but I don’t know the process. Any photos or video diy will help greatly

[Tom D]

https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/par...BMW-320i&mg=25

[jaredmac11]

Gotta get in there and start taking a look at where the play is. Helps to have a friend. Some of those parts are BMW only and thus a bit expensive. I think I had $70 worth of parts in my shopping cart .

I think pelican parts has a write up for the e30. Not exact but similar.

[NumbersMatching]

If you don't want to spend a whole bunch of money and don't mind maybe having to drop the driveshaft every couple years to reshim, you can do it the ghetto way. I shimmed the bushings between the shifter/link and link/socket (the link being part #1 in the 2nd diagram on the linked page, the socket and pin I'm going to mention later are #2 and #7 respectively) using a cut up beer can and some good stiff grease (I went all out and measured the ODs vs. the IDs vs. the thickness of the can to work out exactly how much can I could stuff in there, but trial and error works as long as you've got a couple extra beers). Proper steel shim stock would last longer than extruded aluminum but that stuff costs money and I was out of that at the time. Were I to do it again I'd probably drill the plastic bushings a tiny bit larger since they wore out of round and that limited the amount of shim I could use, thus limiting the quality of the end result. But I'm not taking that giubo down again and I'm happy with the result I got.

The pin between the socket and the selector shaft of the transmission was worn as well so I made a replacement with the shank of a 1/4" gr8 bolt turned down to the various diameters that my socket and selector shaft had worn out to (I did this with a cordless drill and sandpaper, no need to get fancy), one could use drill rod if one wanted a longer lasting replacement- the existing pin is quite hard (harder than my cheap chinese files, anyway) so even a gr8 bolt may not last particularly long. It's not likely to fail completely, mind- just won't last the 40 years the OE one did before getting sloppy again.

This is nominally a 6mm pin, so a 1/4" gives you ~.35mm to play with (and with the nominal sizing of bolts likely even less, I barely took 5 thou off mine to get down to the 6.22 the socket had worn to), if your socket and selector shaft have worn past that point you may want to look at replacements.