- Joined
- Jan 23, 2017
- Messages
- 114
Fair warning, this is a long post, and there aren't any pictures. If you want to skip my install story and read my thoughts on the shifter itself, start with the 4th to last paragraph.
Alot of buzz around MGW shifters here lately, so I figured I'd keep their momentum going. A few of you may recognize me as the one who posted about the issues with the T56M XL (mainly due to bad install). Those issues seem to have been sorted out as I've gone around 1300 miles and my slave cylinder is still there!
On to the point; since my transmission is now operating as intended, I started to get on it more and learn it. All in all, I absolutely love it. In my opinion, it's a vast improvement over the MT-82. I did, however, start to notice that the factory shifter left a little to be desired.
After a quick perusal of shifter threads, it became clear that MGW was the only option for me. When ordering you have two options of shift ball color: black and white. Since I already have 2 black ones, and a grabber blue one, I went with white. Took about 5 days from ordering to arrive at my doorstep, and everything was packaged well and in great shape. Only negative I noticed was there were no instructions, but due to the simplicity of the design, I wasn't too worried.
On to the removal of the old shifter. Fairly smooth sailing, plastic trim pieces come off easily, next comes the rubber boot, slides right off the old shifter and allows access to the 4 retainer bolts. 1/2" bolts. We run into our first problem. Apparently with some bellhousings, the transmission will mount up very slightly off-center. The problem this yields is that the bolts are about 4" apart from each other, and the hole to the trans tunnel is about 4" in diameter. If the transmission was centered, no problem, but its not.
This was fairly easily overcome using a 3/8" drive knuckle and a very shallow 1/2" socket. I say fairly easy because due to the height of the socket with knuckle attached, the bend of the knuckle was touching the top of the transmission tunnel. Not a huge deal, required a bit of extra torque but they came out easily enough.
Next, was my biggest issue and an absolute head scratcher. After the 4 bolts had been removed, I figured it was smooth sailing to get the old shifter assembly out. Dead wrong. The RTV sealant held on to that thing like a long lost brother. I started to doubt myself and was looking around for secret bolts that may still be holding this thing on. Eventually I called MGW and asked what I was doing wrong, they told me what I had initially suspected, that there was just alot of gasket sealant around the old assembly and it had to be broken free. Annoyingly, I ended up having to jack up the car (I was REALLY looking forward to a project that didn't require me to be underneath the car, for once) and use a very long flat head screwdriver and a rubber mallet and punch the old shifter away from the transmission. Thankfully, there was a very slight overhand that allowed me something to place my screwdriver on.
Now the old shifter is off, we're in business, right? Nope. I pre-place all 4 bolts (these were 13mm, NOT 1/2"), lock washers, and washers into the MGW shifter prior to setting it onto the transmission. Obviously, 2 of the bolts that were accessible were easy to start to tighten. The other 2 proved troublesome.
Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures, so I'll use my words as best I can to explain the issue. The shifter assembly sits slightly towards the rear half of the rectangular plate. The 4 bolts are at each corner. The 2 bolts on the right were easily accessed because they were the ones that had moved closer to center (because of transmission being off center) and the 2 bolts on the left had moved underneath the transmission tunnel. Using my knuckle, I was able to tighten the top left bolt because the shifter did not come close to this bolt. The bottom left bolt, however, was extremely problematic. The shifter sat too close to the bolt to allow maneuverability of the knuckle onto the bolt from the top. Begrudgingly, I shimmied back under the car, and put a socket on it from the bottom. Because of the downward sloping at the back of the trans tunnel, the length of my socket would not fit and allow me to set the socket firmly onto the bolt. So, about 2" socket pulls at a time, I slowly turned this bolt with about 3/4 of the socket in contact with the bolt. Obviously this would not get me fully tightened, but I'd think of that when I got there. This got me most of the way there, and got the bolt down far enough for me to carefully maneuver the knuckle and socket onto the bolt from the bottom, and attach my socket wrench to the knuckle from the top. FINALLY, all 4 bolts are in, and we're basically done.
Next, you set the position of your shift rod and tighten everything up, replace the boot (which is reluctant to fit around the much bigger MGW assembly, but still fits) and replace all your sound dampening material. MGW is even nice enough to include an extra, adhesive foam pad that firmly hugs the new shifter and still allows the factory sound dampening material to fit underneath the plastic trim.
NOW, finally, I get to take this thing on a drive. All I can say is wow, what a difference. Two major differences, the 30% throw reduction is obvious, and it feels GREAT. The shifts feel VERY authoritative. Rowing through the gears while really letting the engine out to play is very satisfying. The return springs are VERY strong and makes the 2-3 shift just oh so easy.
There is absolutely no doubt that you're in gear. That addressed one of my two complaints with the factory T56M XL shifter. If you're like me and daily drive your mustang, you know that sometimes you lazily shift your car, especially in traffic, because you're tired of shifting. Every great once in a while, with the old shifter, it would only partially accept me going into 2nd, and when I released the clutch, it would howl angrily at me until I punched the clutch back in and fixed my lazy mistake.
The 2nd big thing I noticed is that it requires a GREAT deal of strength to get this thing into reverse. For context, I'm a 300lb, 25yr old guy who has competitively powerlifted. Not trying to sound arrogant, but I'm pretty damn strong. This thing is a beast to get into reverse. One guy on another thread stated it took him 2 hands to get into reverse, and before I did my install, I chuckled. Now I see he wasn't kidding. I wouldn't say this is a bad thing though, and here's why. Every now and then, while cruising in 6th gear, you find that you're braking (maybe building traffic, some douche cuts you off, whatever) and downshifting to 5th at the same time. This is significant because the T56 requires you to be braking in order to allow you to put the car into reverse. In the T56, reverse is to the right of 5th, not to the left of 1st. With the stock shifter, it is WAY WAY WAY too easy to put this thing into reverse while going 65 on the highway. Thankfully, it feels very different than going into 5th and as long as you're paying attention, you can fix yourself before you find yourself smashing into the center divider.
So, all in all, I'm very satisfied with my MGW shifter and don't have a single bad thing to say about it. All of my install issues were completely independent of anything that MGW did and their customer service was great when I called them with my question. Sorry for the incredibly long write up, needed to kill an hour while I wait for the parents to arrive at the airport. Hope you enjoyed!
Alot of buzz around MGW shifters here lately, so I figured I'd keep their momentum going. A few of you may recognize me as the one who posted about the issues with the T56M XL (mainly due to bad install). Those issues seem to have been sorted out as I've gone around 1300 miles and my slave cylinder is still there!
On to the point; since my transmission is now operating as intended, I started to get on it more and learn it. All in all, I absolutely love it. In my opinion, it's a vast improvement over the MT-82. I did, however, start to notice that the factory shifter left a little to be desired.
After a quick perusal of shifter threads, it became clear that MGW was the only option for me. When ordering you have two options of shift ball color: black and white. Since I already have 2 black ones, and a grabber blue one, I went with white. Took about 5 days from ordering to arrive at my doorstep, and everything was packaged well and in great shape. Only negative I noticed was there were no instructions, but due to the simplicity of the design, I wasn't too worried.
On to the removal of the old shifter. Fairly smooth sailing, plastic trim pieces come off easily, next comes the rubber boot, slides right off the old shifter and allows access to the 4 retainer bolts. 1/2" bolts. We run into our first problem. Apparently with some bellhousings, the transmission will mount up very slightly off-center. The problem this yields is that the bolts are about 4" apart from each other, and the hole to the trans tunnel is about 4" in diameter. If the transmission was centered, no problem, but its not.
This was fairly easily overcome using a 3/8" drive knuckle and a very shallow 1/2" socket. I say fairly easy because due to the height of the socket with knuckle attached, the bend of the knuckle was touching the top of the transmission tunnel. Not a huge deal, required a bit of extra torque but they came out easily enough.
Next, was my biggest issue and an absolute head scratcher. After the 4 bolts had been removed, I figured it was smooth sailing to get the old shifter assembly out. Dead wrong. The RTV sealant held on to that thing like a long lost brother. I started to doubt myself and was looking around for secret bolts that may still be holding this thing on. Eventually I called MGW and asked what I was doing wrong, they told me what I had initially suspected, that there was just alot of gasket sealant around the old assembly and it had to be broken free. Annoyingly, I ended up having to jack up the car (I was REALLY looking forward to a project that didn't require me to be underneath the car, for once) and use a very long flat head screwdriver and a rubber mallet and punch the old shifter away from the transmission. Thankfully, there was a very slight overhand that allowed me something to place my screwdriver on.
Now the old shifter is off, we're in business, right? Nope. I pre-place all 4 bolts (these were 13mm, NOT 1/2"), lock washers, and washers into the MGW shifter prior to setting it onto the transmission. Obviously, 2 of the bolts that were accessible were easy to start to tighten. The other 2 proved troublesome.
Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures, so I'll use my words as best I can to explain the issue. The shifter assembly sits slightly towards the rear half of the rectangular plate. The 4 bolts are at each corner. The 2 bolts on the right were easily accessed because they were the ones that had moved closer to center (because of transmission being off center) and the 2 bolts on the left had moved underneath the transmission tunnel. Using my knuckle, I was able to tighten the top left bolt because the shifter did not come close to this bolt. The bottom left bolt, however, was extremely problematic. The shifter sat too close to the bolt to allow maneuverability of the knuckle onto the bolt from the top. Begrudgingly, I shimmied back under the car, and put a socket on it from the bottom. Because of the downward sloping at the back of the trans tunnel, the length of my socket would not fit and allow me to set the socket firmly onto the bolt. So, about 2" socket pulls at a time, I slowly turned this bolt with about 3/4 of the socket in contact with the bolt. Obviously this would not get me fully tightened, but I'd think of that when I got there. This got me most of the way there, and got the bolt down far enough for me to carefully maneuver the knuckle and socket onto the bolt from the bottom, and attach my socket wrench to the knuckle from the top. FINALLY, all 4 bolts are in, and we're basically done.
Next, you set the position of your shift rod and tighten everything up, replace the boot (which is reluctant to fit around the much bigger MGW assembly, but still fits) and replace all your sound dampening material. MGW is even nice enough to include an extra, adhesive foam pad that firmly hugs the new shifter and still allows the factory sound dampening material to fit underneath the plastic trim.
NOW, finally, I get to take this thing on a drive. All I can say is wow, what a difference. Two major differences, the 30% throw reduction is obvious, and it feels GREAT. The shifts feel VERY authoritative. Rowing through the gears while really letting the engine out to play is very satisfying. The return springs are VERY strong and makes the 2-3 shift just oh so easy.
There is absolutely no doubt that you're in gear. That addressed one of my two complaints with the factory T56M XL shifter. If you're like me and daily drive your mustang, you know that sometimes you lazily shift your car, especially in traffic, because you're tired of shifting. Every great once in a while, with the old shifter, it would only partially accept me going into 2nd, and when I released the clutch, it would howl angrily at me until I punched the clutch back in and fixed my lazy mistake.
The 2nd big thing I noticed is that it requires a GREAT deal of strength to get this thing into reverse. For context, I'm a 300lb, 25yr old guy who has competitively powerlifted. Not trying to sound arrogant, but I'm pretty damn strong. This thing is a beast to get into reverse. One guy on another thread stated it took him 2 hands to get into reverse, and before I did my install, I chuckled. Now I see he wasn't kidding. I wouldn't say this is a bad thing though, and here's why. Every now and then, while cruising in 6th gear, you find that you're braking (maybe building traffic, some douche cuts you off, whatever) and downshifting to 5th at the same time. This is significant because the T56 requires you to be braking in order to allow you to put the car into reverse. In the T56, reverse is to the right of 5th, not to the left of 1st. With the stock shifter, it is WAY WAY WAY too easy to put this thing into reverse while going 65 on the highway. Thankfully, it feels very different than going into 5th and as long as you're paying attention, you can fix yourself before you find yourself smashing into the center divider.
So, all in all, I'm very satisfied with my MGW shifter and don't have a single bad thing to say about it. All of my install issues were completely independent of anything that MGW did and their customer service was great when I called them with my question. Sorry for the incredibly long write up, needed to kill an hour while I wait for the parents to arrive at the airport. Hope you enjoyed!
