Kartboy Shifter Noise!

I had a new Kartboy short throw shifter installed last Friday. Love the shift linkage action and the heavier weighted feel. It was put in by a local forum member who's mechanically skilled.

 

It was pretty hot on Friday and I was running errands around town so I drove with the windows down. The following day, with the windows up I began noticing noise that shouldn't exist as soon as I started driving. When I'm shifting between gears I hear a very audible sound that's like rubber grinding on rubber. This is especially apparent when I'm going from Reverse to First.

 

Also, when I'm cruising on city streets in Fifth doing around 45~50mph you can hear a faint rubbery rattling sound. It become very noticeable if you push forward on the gear lever.

 

Has anyone of you who's got a Kartboy shifter on your car ever experienced something like what I'm describing? Help...this is driving me crazy!

Short shifters are a piece of cake to install. The problem is that it's not a one-sized-fits-all approach....usually when re-installing, it's very easy to have some of the insulatory pieces move into a position you don't want, and cause binding/rubbing issues.

 

My advice is to take the shift knob off, then the bezel surrounding the shifter. Pull the bezel/ashtray/shift boot off altogether. Now you will be looking at the shift rod and a rubber shift boot underneath. Try to take the rubber shift boot off (pretty easy to do once you've done it).

 

Underneath that is going to be foam insulation surrounding the whole thing. At this point, what I would say is that you need to decide if you want to try to re-install all this insulation/rubber boot and try to avoid any binding, or if you want to trim some of the foam and align the items in a way that you hope they don't rub.

 

I wound up trimming a substantial portion of my foam away. Allows a tad bit more gear noise into the cabin, but never had any sense of binding of that I was pushing through foam and rubber to shift.

 

Good luck. All of this requires no tools, except maybe a pair of scissors for trimming. IIRC, the foam is held down by plastic flathead screws; you can just unscrew them with your hand, or use a stubby flathead screwdriver.

 

Joe

Ahh...I never knew that yellow piece of foam is the culprit. I thought it's there to "insulate". I thought we had put that foam back the way it was.

 

So the rubber-grinding-on-rubber sound is quite common on these aftermarket short shifters, not just Kartboy's? I just wanted to make sure it wasn't due to improper installation because my friend did have a hard time taking out and putting back in the thin retaining clip that's at the base.

EVERYONE has a hard time with that damn C-Clip. If it went back into it's groove, then that's not the cause (though too little grease on your new shifter's "ball & bushing" might cause some noise too.

 

I'll list out the common causes and cures of short shifter post-installation problems:

 

1. Binding with material (i.e. rubber shift boot, insulatory foam). Cure: Reposition and/or cut out some of the material.

 

2. Overly difficult shifting. Cure: Assuming correct installation, then make sure no material is binding, make sure the bolt going through the shift lever/yoke is not over-tightened (a 1/4" turn looser can make a world of difference), and, if necessary, cut some insulation out. Also, weirdly on mine, loosening the shift knob one turn made shifting alot easier at one point.

 

3. Increased drivetrain noise. Cure: Don't cut so much material out (hehehe). Also, I found switching to a better gear lubricant to cut down on syncro noise dramatically.

 

4. Odd noises. Cure: Inspect the shifter, ensure nothing is loose or out of place, and carefully re-install and determine if the noise changes.

 

 

I'm probably a freak with this, as I wound up taking my shifter apart about 5 times to get it to feel and sound "right". I wound up cutting a good amount of insulation out, replacing the gear lubricant, loosening the shift knob one turn, loading up the shifter bushings with fresh grease, loosening the shift-rod bolt about 1/2 turn, and otherwise playing with the adjustability of my Cobb Shifter so much that I wound up stripping the adjustment screw on the throw-adjustment.

 

Good luck man. This really is a piece of cake, just takes some tweaking for some folks.

 

Joe

Thanks for all the tips. If I remember correctly my friend did transfer all the grease from the factory unit onto my new Kartboy shifter.

 

I'll probably ask him to take a look at my shifter on Friday.

bump for experience from other Kartboy owners

Oh, let me add: sometimes transferring all the grease from the factory bushings is not enough. Plan on adding a little new grease....it's really not a big deal if it's got some excess grease on it, and grease is cheap. And you don't need anything fancy, since this place sees minimal heat and pressure.

 

Joe

Ok, I'll keep that in mind.

Pulled up the stock rubber boot that's underneath the leather unit this morning and that seems to quiet things down a lot. But I can still detect a slight rattle when in 4th gear and sometimes 5th. I guess that's just the nature of the beast and something I have to put up with once you go aftermarket.