brooklee1000

A tap with a hammer should loosen the drive shaft from the output flange. They can be difficult and sometimes you will need to be aggresive. The shifter has a retainer ring at the bottom of it inside the housing(its hard to explain) Take 1 finger of each hand and slide down the stick shift to the base, then down inside the housing, inside there is a ring that has 2 flat edges and is spring loaded into the housing. use those edges as a pivot, push down with your fingers and turn at the same time counter clockwise. It is hard to do, but this ring releases the stick shift for (hahahah) easy removal. You already removed the boot, and in your pics I can see the ring that you need to depress. Hope you have small strong fingers. I once had this same problem and it caused me alot of headache. Good luck.

scottd

^^This is an easier way to remove the shifter. As suggested, remove the set screw and the two bolts that hold the shifter seat to the side of the transmission (they are the two bolts you are looking down on in the second picture in your first post). After removing the bolts, lift up on the shifter to disengage from the shaft that goes into the side cover and then drop the shifter down and out. I had to remove mine this way because I couldn't get the retainer ring apart.