Darn little plastic bushing discontinued by Ford – Of Course it is!
The fix does require reaming the bushing hole up from 14mm to 5/8” with the included reamer. It’s just plastic so you can easily turn the reamer by hand with a vice grip or an open end wrench – you don’t need anything special.
If you are having an issue with breaking this bushing chances are the L arm is the real issue. After years of abuse the hole in the L arm will oval out and even break off parts around the edges. The bushing doesn’t stand a chance.
We needed to find a way to fix the L bracket and make a bushing that will stand the test of time. I think we got it!!
Once we have a straight hole we insert our brass bushing and lock it in with the provided snap rings and we will have a tight shifter again. If you look inside the bushing you can see that we didn’t bore the hole all the way through so make sure you put the bored side facing the ball stud it goes over. If in doubt slip it on the ball stud and you’ll see it only goes one way. The brass is obviously more durable than plastic but I would recommend dropping a little grease in the hole – not that I would expect the brass to break down or wear out in the next 100K miles.
PLEASE NOTE THAT the real trouble begins out at the transmission. Lets break it down, at the shifter the L arm and components take the side to side motion of the shift lever and translate it to back and forth motion through the cable. At the transmission end the back and forth motion of the cable attaches to a rocker linkage and is now converted to up and down movement. There is a little bushing there that takes the load, a black plastic square was the Getrag piece. When it ultimately wore out it wasn’t offered as a replacement part. We have a replacement bushing for there, and a replacement pin (where the bushing rides) if that is worn flat from not servicing the bushing soon enough. You may need a full kit but maybe you did the transmission side already. If you want it to shift like a new car or better make sure there is no play on the trans side and possibly adjust the shift cables – although 25 year old plastic is fragile so maybe not since there aren’t easy replacement cables.
