Spanky

this made for a crazy ending to my night. so im driving home about an hour ago, and thought i would stop off at the gas station and pick up a drink and some beef jerkey or something. as soon as i pulled in, i noticed i couldnt shift gears. reason being was my shift lever had snapped off!

i managed to coast into a parking spot where i determined what had happened. i pulled the boot back enough to peak down and see the remaining lever, which was only an inch or 2 at most. i was real lucky to have the lever not break any lower!

i was then able to throw some vise grips on what was left of the lever and use the vise grips as my new lever to carefully drive it home the last 2 blocks to my house!!

has anyone ever broken their shift lever?? i find that really odd.

i was just looking around on here to find that the removal/installation looks fairly easy, only problem is i cant seem to find anywhere who sales stock shifter levers, so i have no clue what im going to have to pay to get one. guess i will be making a few calls in the morning.

sh0kk86

the dealership wanted more than $100 or 180, cant remember, when i last checkd this summer for the whole shift assembly.

anotherjeff

Any self-serve salvage yards around SLC?

Ganoid

I have cut 2 of my 3 levers in half to dog leg them so I could use an R151 in my 3.0 xcab. I guess what I'm saying is why not just have it welded for $20. The only trick is to have plenty of water on hand to cool the rubber insulator section down as soon as your done welding.

ozzydg55

Do you have a body lift on your truck if you do some bl come with an extensionfor the shifter that needs to be welded.Somebody in the classifieds is selling shifters. good luck

n4ynu1010

Man ...........you must be a aggressive shifter eh

idayota

i just tossed a whole assembly away two months ago cause i couldn't find a use for it and i was tired of seeing it laying around the garage...sorry. they aren't that expensive at a wrecking yard. i picked one up for $20 (hence why i had an extra). i think re-welding it sounds like the cheapest/easiest way to go though. you could find some tube that the shifter bar fits snugly inside of (might have to grind some of the actual shifter down to make it fit real tight) and then weld it up good and solid...or just butt weld it. grind a 45 degree chamfer on both ends of the break, stick it together and go to town.

idayota

oh, and props for the vice grip idea...way to go!

jcfb

I used to have a 3" body lift on my truck, so the shift levers were extended. I noticed in your signature that you have a 2" body lift, so I bet the extension weld broke. I broke my off on the transfer case, used a broken ratchet to get it back into 2wd, drove it back home. What I did was pull the shifter linkage, thread the end with a tap and die, then put on a coupling nut, then a piece of bar stock, then I threaded the bar stock with the same threading for a shift knob. Looks pretty good, but it isn't stock. If you wanted to keep the stock shift lever, you could do all of the above, but then just glue the stock shifter lever onto a new piece of bar stock after the coupling nut. You'll notice when you get to looking at it that the shift lever is just hollow and glued onto the bar, you can heat it up, slide it off, and glue it onto something else.

ydopen

You must shift that thing like a 9 second drag car. I took mine out and put it in a vise and bent it with a 6 foot cheeter pipe and it breaking was out of the question

n4ynu1010

By the way ..........Cudo's on the Mcgyver vice grip shifter as well

Spanky

well heres an update on my situation:

i went down to the stealership today and just ended up buying a new shifter lever. bad news was is that i have to wait till tuesday to get it, and it cost me $125. i thought about welding it, but i know for darn sure i would end up just buying a new one anyways, rather than having it jerry rigged. so i just decided to get it over with.

as far as why/how it broke.... im at a loss. yeah yeah yeah on the aggressive driving ideas... like ydopen kinda spoke on... getting that thing to bend isnt easy. believe me, i tried today just out of curiosity.

Spanky

jcfb:

question for ya. yeah i have a 2" BL. i had it installed at 4WheelParts. i dont know whether or not that kit came with a an extension but perhaps it did. i dont recall needing to reach down 2 more inches to reach my shifter after the lift.

but then again it is 4WheelParts, so who knows. (dont get me started on them)

so how would they go about installing that extension? physically cutting my shifter lever and welding in a 2" extension??

because i didnt notice any signs of welding.

jcfb

Don't get me started on 4Wheel Parts either

Well, on the rod that protrudes from underneath the shifter and then connects onto the top of the transmission and so on and so forth, they usually cut the rod. So they didn't actually cut the black shift handle. Another option is that they heated your shift lever up, pulled it off the stock rod and glued on a longer piece of rod. However, based on the fact that it broke, that my (transfer case) lever broke as well, and the fact that the previous owner of my truck had a 3" body lift installed at 4Wheel Parts, my money is on the weld method.