Camaro Rebuild Journal

With all of the seats out of the car, the only way to remove the carpet is to remove the shifter unit. The shifter operates the gear box via a cable that is attached to the shifter mechanism via a lock pin. With the lock pin removed, the unit is then held onto the transmission tunnel by four bolts.
I then (with much trepidation) took the shifter apart ready for cleaning and respraying.

Now the messy bit. I mainly used petrol and a stiff (not wire) brush to clean off the old grease from the components. Obviously, you have to take care when cleaning plastic or nylon with petrol, just in case the petrol gets hungry and eats the component alive. The metal parts I then went over with wire wool to remove the surface rust. These were then washed over with petrol again, and left to dry. Once dry, I then the gave all of the metal bit a once over with Kurust, prior to painting.

With everything all clean and shiny, I gave the shifter body and the cable boot hold down plate 3 coats of black (what colour did you think it was going to be?) smooth Hammerite. However, before I did that, I masked off the tracks where the nylon sliders would travel, as well as the selector notches on the inside of the shifter body.
When the paint was dry and cured (I left all the bits for 24 hours) I started to reassembly the unit. I greased the tracks and nylon sliders, as well as the selector notches and selector rod. Reassembly is really easy, but you should not re-attach the shifter knob until the unit is installed and you have put the transmission tunnel cover back in the vehicle.

Re-installing the shifter is easy, just feed the shifter cable back through the rubber boot and hold down plate, and re-clip it to the shifter mechanism. Then, secure the hold down plate, re-seat the shifter unit and bolt it back in. Et vôila! a recon'd and free-moving shifter that no bugger is gonna see cos it is hidden. Hmm.