[alfa] Re: Repairing 105 Series Shift Lever (longish)

["Bill Sinclair" <bills@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jeff Greenfield responding to Joe Fillip's shift lever inquiry said:

>Remove the shift lever from the transmission. When you do there will
>probably be 2 or 3 ball bearing and (I think) a spring that will fall
>(should) fall out.

Two balls, the spring is at the top of the shifter under that piece that the
knob screws onto.  The shift lever is pressed into a casting that has a pinch
bolt at the bottom.  Remove the bolt and the lever can be pulled off.  The
aforementioned ball bearings will fall out, roll under the car and disappear
under your workbench.

>Once that is apart, you can disassemble the shift lever, I forget exactly
>how it comes apart, but it is pretty obvious and there are no surprises.

One surprise that I encountered was the rod inside the shift lever couldn't be
removed, making it impossible to replace the rubber sleeve at the lower end of
the shaft that disintegrated years ago (the remaining particles are probably
what's causing your reverse lockout to stick).  It wasn't a big deal to clean
it out and  get the reverse lockout working (grease the ball bearings before
you put them back in) but eliminating the rattle is another story.  I tried a
piece of Teflon tubing (thanks to Wayne Abbott) inside of the shaft to keep
the inner shaft from rattling but it didn't work.  I then tried some heat
shrink tubing around the inner shaft to keep it from rattling against the
outer shaft but that didn't work either.  I think that some of the rattling is
coming from the portion of the inner rod that comes out on the other end of
the pressed in bushing at the bottom of the shaft.  This is the part that had
a rubber sleeve that turned to dust and now can't be replaced.  My Duetto
cardisc has an exploded diagram that makes it a little easier to understand.
Also, the top of the shifter has a metal sleeve that gets pushed down with the
shift knob for the reverse lockout.  This sleeve is metal on metal with the
main shaft.  I'm not sure that it ever could have not rattled with this
design.  Tom Sahines emailed me that the only satisfactory solution was to
replace the push type reverse lockout shaft with one from a later
transmission.  It apparently uses some type of directional plate (which must
also be scavenged) that won't allow you to enter reverse from 5th gear.
Eliminates having to jam the shifter with all your might to get it in reverse,
too.  I may eventually try it.  Alternately, I have one friend with a 1600
that just said the heck with the lockout and filled the shaft with RTV to stop
the inner shaft from rattling (obviously the inner shaft no longer moves
freely, making it impossible to push down on the shifter).  I think he
disabled the lockout by adding a couple extra ball bearings at the base to
keep the lockout pushed in all the time.  You'd better be really careful about
downshifting into 4th if you do this though.  It's also true that an out of
balance drive shaft can make the gear shift rattle worse.  Does anybody out
there have a push type reverse lockout shifter that doesn't rattle above 4,000
RPM?  If so, how'd ya do it?

Bill Sinclair
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