Fitting a VW Golf gear shift balljoint - 6 speed short shift

[Rusty]

Here's the extra work I did when fitting the Golf shift balljoint to a 6 speed ABY. The 034 how-to is on their website. Some of the work I did was to retain the OE spring, as I was not supplied the Golf spring with my new kit.

I slotted one of the original holes to enable me to move the reverse gate over a bit.

Then I modified the base plate to clear, using 2 M10 bolts to hold it in place.


Having run the shifter with the OE spring, I was not at all happy with the spring pressure required to hit reverse, so a bit of investigation revealed that the original compressed length was approx 1".

...and the spring was over 1.5" with the new ball joint.

So I took the clips off the ball joint...

...and then took the nose off the spring perch

The nose was a little longer than required, so I cut it down to match the clips I had removed (approx 15mm).

This created a spacer, which I fitted above the upper spring seat, putting the compressed length back to approx. 1"

Finally, I took a dremmel to the mounting holes, to slot them and allow for enough movement to adjust and contrary to the pictures shown by 034, I had to position the reverse gate as shown here (I'd taken a lot of time and care to do as shown, including slotting the baseplate more, tweaking the cage and lots more... and it wasn't anywhere near )

And finally, here it is all fitted and adjusted. The slots were essential to getting first, second and reverse to all work smoothly

[Nuvo]

Thank you for sharing your efforts to get this working.
What grease do you recommend for the balljoint assy?

[Rusty]

I just spunked a load of LM grease on there but as it's fairly loose tolerance and not under any temperature, you could feasibly put pretty much any thick grease on there.

Top tip: don't grease it until you've finished fettling, filing and sawing, as a) you get lots of swarf in the grease and b) you get covered in the stuff!

I think that some more surgery on the cage, to remove the unused section would neaten things up or, I may design an integrated base plate and reverse gate.

I forgot to mention, I trimmed the plastic retaining ring on the base of the shifter a little in height, so that it all bolted up flush.

[andy j]

Great write up. Think i will give this a go. Did you get the ball joint from 034 or can you get them elsewhere?

[Rusty]

I got mine from DeS on here, as he does the backing plate but the joint on its own is widely available.

[andy j]

Just ordered one of ebay. I will make the plate up for the bottom myself.

[Rusty]

034 just glued the ring in place on their writeup. Not sure what that ring does, I think it's just a support for the rubber.

[Rusty]

Been running the old girl to work all week, so had plenty of time to make my mind up about this. In short, well worth the effort to get it fitted and adjusted properly. If you're considering it then do it.

[andy j]

I fitted mine on tuesday. After a bit of fiddling about its now working well. Unfortunately i have play in my shifter arm bush so will get that fixed and it should be spot on!