Bret
Yoda
Offline
Hey folks,
Ok part of me didn’t want to share this because of all the ridicule & warnings I got form some of my fellow BCF members when I purchased my 928.
So at risk of having a few of my friends say “I told you so” here is what happened – I just had what I would consider a minor mechanical failure a week or so back when the transmission linkage came apart. I was leaving the supermarket parking lot and had just shifted into third gear and was about to shift into fourth when I about put my fist through the center console. Stick shift was flopping around and I couldn’t get it to change gear. Luckily it was in third and was able to milk it home about two miles away.
Upon inspection what had happened was that the front linkage ball socket of the shifter linkage had popped off of the ball at the front of the torque tube – that connects the engine & the transaxle in the rear.
Here’s a picture of the culprit that caused me so much pain:
I had to drop the exhaust & the heat shield to access this and let me tell you it was a real PITB to get at it. Without going into the sorted details I will tell you that it was way harder than I figured on but must say it allowed me to do some house cleaning on the underside due to years of neglect. Mismatched & rusted hardware & replacing the toasted exhaust gaskets.
Anyway I am impressed with the overall improvement in how the shifter works after my repairs. Guess I didn’t realize how crappy the shifting was until I replaced that one component. Also it seems to have cleared up an annoying mystery vibration that the car would do under load at 3000+ RPMs. I guess the ball socket pictured above was the root cause of this.
I guess I'm just happy she's running again. But must admit that I am very aware that had I not been good under the bonnet with a "spanner", I probably would have paid a small fortune to get this problem fixed.
As it is I think I spent less than a $100 for parts (ball socket, hardware & exhaust gaskets). All is good. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif
Ok part of me didn’t want to share this because of all the ridicule & warnings I got form some of my fellow BCF members when I purchased my 928.
So at risk of having a few of my friends say “I told you so” here is what happened – I just had what I would consider a minor mechanical failure a week or so back when the transmission linkage came apart. I was leaving the supermarket parking lot and had just shifted into third gear and was about to shift into fourth when I about put my fist through the center console. Stick shift was flopping around and I couldn’t get it to change gear. Luckily it was in third and was able to milk it home about two miles away.
Upon inspection what had happened was that the front linkage ball socket of the shifter linkage had popped off of the ball at the front of the torque tube – that connects the engine & the transaxle in the rear.
Here’s a picture of the culprit that caused me so much pain:

I had to drop the exhaust & the heat shield to access this and let me tell you it was a real PITB to get at it. Without going into the sorted details I will tell you that it was way harder than I figured on but must say it allowed me to do some house cleaning on the underside due to years of neglect. Mismatched & rusted hardware & replacing the toasted exhaust gaskets.
Anyway I am impressed with the overall improvement in how the shifter works after my repairs. Guess I didn’t realize how crappy the shifting was until I replaced that one component. Also it seems to have cleared up an annoying mystery vibration that the car would do under load at 3000+ RPMs. I guess the ball socket pictured above was the root cause of this.
I guess I'm just happy she's running again. But must admit that I am very aware that had I not been good under the bonnet with a "spanner", I probably would have paid a small fortune to get this problem fixed.
As it is I think I spent less than a $100 for parts (ball socket, hardware & exhaust gaskets). All is good. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thumbsup.gif