After first seeing that Marlin had started prototyping a short throw shifter a while back, I knew I had to get my hands on one. I signed up to be notified when they became available and lo and behold it’s here! (Well actually this happened a few weeks ago, but hey.)


Onward…I tried taking pictures to compare the shift distances, but they didn’t come out all that great.


Anyway, here’s shifting from 1st to 2nd.








The next steps involved removing the boots and the retaining bits and pieces.





I removed the shift handle and stuffed a rag inside. I also kept a vacuum handy to get any stray dirt. Next the six bolts had to come out. The first five came out fine, but the last one in the corner was a pain. Since it’s at a pretty bad angle, I tried reaching up from under the truck. I finally got it out using a small socket.





There’s no gasket to scrape off, so I then cleaned the surface using Acetone or something similar.








I then used Silicon Ultra Gray and everything was essentially the same in reverse.











And to top it all off…however the knob doesn’t exactly screw down perfectly straight, so I’m thinking of getting a nut to remedy that. I’m pretty OCD when it comes to that and I spent a solid 10 minutes trying to screw it on straight to no avail.


Now here are my mediocre pictures of the new shift distances 1st to 5th.
















Overall, I’m very pleased with how it came out. I would say it reduced the distance by about 40%...maybe 50% and 5th gear is no longer miles away. However, during the first few days I definitely had to get used to it. My buddy has a 2001 Tacoma with a URD short shifter and I’ve noticed with his that it takes some muscle to get it into 1st. However, that hasn’t been a problem with Marlin’s. While it certainly isn’t a cheap mod, I figured the constant shifting I do make it worth it worthwhile.

 

that's cool. Considered doing this in my truck, but its not really important to me. Nice mod though.