Do It Yourself Short Shifter
by Joel N
My pulsar had a wobbly shifter when I bought it. I put up with this for about 1 1/2 years before I decided to try and make my own short shifter and fix the wobble at the same time.
After a bit of searching on the web I realised that all I had to do was lengthen the section of the shifter below the pivot point. This effectively gives you more leverage, which results in a shorter throw.
I took the shifter out of my old pulsar (that was written off) and took it down to a local mechanic. I asked him to cut it below the nylon ball (pivot point) and weld in about another 2". As you can see on the pics page he did an excellent job on the welding. You could hardly even tell that it was welded. The best part is that it only cost me $10. Once I installed the shifter I found that the selector rod fouled the front sway bar. Luckily I had a spare of these and I took to it with the hammer. I put this onto the car and now there is plenty of clearance.
The only other problem that I found was that the heat shield for the cat also had to be creatively panel beated so it didn't foul the shifter as well :) The shift is about 50% shorter than standard. It's pretty notchy, but I reckon it's great. For $10 it's the best DIY mod I have ever seen. Check out the pic to see a comparison between the stock and modified shifters.
