This is for a Gen 1 Brat, looked and found some advice for the 80's and up but nothing for these old beasts. Not sure exactly how much play there should be on these things but I feel like im driving a big rig sometimes with how sloppy my shifter is and don't think its completely normal. The shifting on my XB is really short and crisp but the brat just kind of wiggles around. Think it could eb tightened up a bit with new shift bushings or something? Where could I get some new ones?

Edited July 24, 201213 yr by BlindSight

Im no expert but I think the gen 1s have a lot of play in the shifter. They wiggle around and bit for sure.

+ 1

New bushings from local dealer- should be available. They will feel better, but still feel sloppy relative to a new car.

Haha my local subaru dealer didn't even know what a Brat was :/.

Pull the shifter boot and you will see that the issue is not the bushing but the shifter itself. I tried to tighten the bushing but learned it is the shifter rod moving back and forth left to right.

a while back i went and bought some really thing rubber washers to fit in between the shaft and the surrounding metal... couldn't get them to fit So my next idea is to find some spare gasket material and slide it in there... What i really want is for my shifter to stop sounding like a rattle snake, hopfully that would help

Like how thin? What about taking a razor and cutting them in half or something like that? I know they make really thin neoprene washers also, might have to order them but should only be a few cents each.

The problem is that the metal for the shifter shaft (the one that goes into the transmission) is made of a too soft metal. I drilled and tapped a small hole to "lock" the sleeve thing on the shaft with a small bolt. Some on the board have welded it.

 

Note that it needs to be fixed, my shifter would hit the side of the trans housing before I could get into reverse. I put 30k miles on my brat a year. Fix has worked done for over a year.

 

-daniel

my dad does metallic bushings from thin pipes insted the old plastic ones to fix sloppy shifter in datsuns , the idea could used in subarus

On a '78 Brat, I managed to improve a little by replacing the bolts in the shifter linkage. There were grooves worn in the shaft of the bolt.

On a '78 Brat, I managed to improve a little by replacing the bolts in the shifter linkage. There were grooves worn in the shaft of the bolt.

 

I did this as well with a 4mm (I believe) 2" (I believe) bolt. I got it at Home Depot. The length matters cause half of it is not threaded. Then you simply cut of the un-needed threads.

 

Mine had grooves worn into it as well.

I had the same problem with the shifter hitting the tranny while trying to shift into reverse. I wrapped a piece of an aluminum can around the input to the tranny to fill the space of the worn down metal. It's still sloppy, but way tighter than it was.

Thanks for all the tips everyone, my schedule has been bonkers lately but will be messing with this soon!

Hey, I've got the same issue with my Brat. It's a '86, though. Plus trying to 3rd and 4th are wide out, so it feel like I'd be going into 5th and 6th.

 

Will any of this work for me too, or so there something else completely wrong with mine?