I had been complaining about a very sloppy shift lever in our SL. 1st gear was very hard to engage and reverse required the lever to be extended all the way to the left and pushing the gear in, sometimes making the gears grind (very unpleasant).
I decided to take on the refurbishing task this past sunday, here's a short writeup of the process. Hopefully, I can be pieced together with the very useful info available in the Tech-manual regarding this.
First, I had to remove the carpet from the transmission tunnel. It should have not been glued there in the first place, but I guess the prior owner decided to do so when redoing the interior. It was not too hard to pull out and allowed me to thoroughly clean it before reinstalling.
After removing the carpet, the knob comes off from the shifter by pulling upward. Then, you can visualize the plastic cover that is attached with four 10 mm bolts, as well as the upper boot (in my car, someone had fitted a different type of boot, which also needed to come out and was screwed on with four self piercing screws at this time) which will come out once the plastic cover is off.
Once the plastic plate is out of the way, you can access the two nuts holding the mounting plate in place via two connecting rods on the gearbox. The nuts are 10 mm in size and need to be removed in order to gain access to the plastic bushes below. Also, it will make it much easier to maneuver the shifter rod to replace the bushes on the gearbox end.
The bolt holding the shift rod is 11 mm size and comes off pretty easy. You will need to replace the plastic bushes on this end before reassembly, but to get to the forward bushes, this the complete shift plate will need to come out at this time. Check the lower boot as it may have some damage, especially if the shifter was loose due to broken bushes, causing it to rattle and to be in contact the boot.
This is also a good time to check if your shifter is angled in the right direction. Mine was facing backwards (angle on the shifter slanted towards the back of the car).
Make sure you hold the connecting rods in an easy to reach spot, otherwise, your hand may not fit very comfortably inside the transmission tunnel when trying to reach it later upon reassembly. Ideally, you can tie them with string or use a zip-tie to hold them... I did not do this and regretted it later.
Next, I moved on to the front end cover, which is held in place with four 8 mm screws.
Once the cover is off, you'll be able to see the gearbox end yoke. The bushes in mine were completely gone (you can see the remains of them in dark amber sitting on top of the gearbox), that was the reason for the shifter to be so loose inside the cab. The shifter rod is connected with another 11 mm bolt. It has a larger washer on one side than on the other, make sure you do not mix these prior to reassembly.
Once this bolt is out, all you need to do is replace the two plastic bushes and reassemble all.
I decided to change almost all of the bushes although they were not old or worn, but since I was already in and had the parts with me, I thought it would be best to take care of this now. I also replaced all the boots, leaving only the shift lever bushes that were in perfect condition and did not need replacement.
However, should you need to replace these, you can do this by removing the retaining ring holding the bushes and the lever ball in place. You will need a set of snap ring pliers for this.
In all, not many tools are needed:
11 mm combination wrench (two ideally)
11 mm socket
10 mm socket
8 mm socket
Snap Ring Pliers
It took a little under two hours to finish the job from start to end. If you are lucky, you'll not drop the plastic bushes down inside the transmission tunnel as I did, saving you a few minutes and about 5 ounces of fast orange hand cleaner...
I sincerely hope this information is useful to other users of this site.
Regards,
Andres G
