The next part I swapped over was the B&M short shifter I got from my friend back in July. I followed another forum member's DIY on how to regrease the shifter. The shifter is known to seize up over time so might as well do it while its out of the car.


A busted shifter boot is pretty common with the amount of heat build up from the exhaust system and the age. The main side effect from this is the smell of exhaust fumes in the cabin. Most of the time it would be apparant when the car is stopped and less whenever the car is in motion.




The stock shifter on this car happened to have the Mazdaspeed aluminum bushing. I should have swapped it over to my short shifter but it was more trouble than it was worth at the time.


I had to drill out the transmission tunnel to get to the bolt since I did the install with the transmission dropped on the old FD.





Disassembly, clean up, and reassembly was pretty straight forward. The only big deal was to make sure not to lose the shifter springs and magnets.



Green Grease came in handy again.