Snabb Short Shifter Impressions

[evdrive]

As an owner of a 1998 V70 T5M I got really excited when I found out that a short shifter kit was available.

My only previous experience with using a short throw shifter is in my old Altima. The stock throws on that one were so long I'd accidentally change the radio station when shifting into 3rd so any shortened length was a huge improvement. The kit for that car involved changing out the stick itself and resulted in much shorter throws, but at the expense of a much higher level of effort for that shorter distance. All in all it was an improvement and I was glad I did it.

Now onto the Snabb kit. It's different in that instead of changing out the stick it adds a plate under the hood that changes the geometry of the cables to shorten throws. The install is much easier that for the one in the Altima and there's video how-to on their website. It helps, but there's not much verbal direction on the video. A couple pictures in the included instructions would have helped as well. As it was it didn't take too long and luckily it's in an accessible place which aids in the ease of install. Another good thing about where it's installed is that I found that I had to go back and adjust the plate to get a better feel after a day of driving with the initial setting. When I first installed it I left it set on the middle hole for shifter placement and on the farthest hole for the shortest throws. Before closing it all up I sat in the car to see how everything felt and the throws were too short and didn't feel secure at all. It was to the point where I could feel it want to just pop out of gear so I moved it to the next hole over so the throws weren't cut so short. That seemed to help so I left it that way to test the following day.

The next day I noticed that the effort to shift into 1st, 3rd & 5th were much much harder than stock though the shifts to 2nd, 4th & reverse didn't feel nearly as difficult. Also I had 1st pop out on me twice while I was at a light ready to take off. I wasn't happy with this so I decided to see if any other adjustments would rectify my problems. I was almost ready to just pull it out and go back to stock. I know that any short shifter will require more force to get into gear just based on leverage, but it felt odd that it was much harder going into the forward direction instead of the backwards one. I moved the plate over to the far right hole (facing the car head-on) for shifter placement and found my problems almost completely solved. The shift effort reduced going into the "forward" gears and felt much smoother that it had in the previous setting. Now it still sometimes feels like 1st is going to pop out of gear and at times shifting out of 5th gear takes more effort, but overall I'm much happier with it and willing to give it a few weeks for me to get used to it.

If you get this kit and aren't initially happy with it, play around with the different adjustments to find the right feel. Before I got the kit I read a few glowing reviews and I wanted to share my own impressions of it so that some folks knew the problems I had and what they can try to do to correct them.

I'll post my final impressions after a few weeks and at least a thousand miles of driving.