Fitting Apex Shortshifter: A How Too

Hi folks

I Figured after seeing folk on SXOC ask how to do this I’d take photos whilst fitting mine and do a little “How too” to help out others, so here goes.

1st: Remove panel shown below, it should pop of with a little pressure. Then undo the 4 screws holding the gator on (located underneath). You can then unscrew the gear knob and the gator will come off too.

2nd: You need to remove the center console. Once again it should be held in by 4 screws on the sides and 2 at the front. There are 2 at the front and 2 at the rear between the seats (move your seats all the way forward to get easy access to the rear ones).

Once these are undone the console will lift up over the gear lever and you  will need to unhook the connectors attached to the lighter etc and the console will lift off freely.

3rd: This is how it should look now (sorry for crap photos). You now undo these 4 bolts and remove the rubber surround, like so…

Yes the center console, gator and gear knob are still on, I forgot to take photos whilst they were off.

4th: At this stage it starts to get messy (I suggest wearing disposable rubber gloves).

There are 6 bolts that hold the shifter in place. 4 are easily accessible as you can see below, the other 2 are under the transmission tunnel. To get these I had to crawl under the car and access the from underneath. Once under the car its fairly easy to locate the bolts as you will be able to see into the car through the hole. If you have a ratchet spanner, you should be able to do it through the hole from inside the car. I got the one on the drivers side from above but the passenger side needed more “leverage” to come loose.

Once all 6 bolts are removed the shifter should lift off through the hole.  My one seems to have had gasket sealed used to attach it so a hammer, a large flat screwdriver and a light tap popped it off.

Warning! at the same time the spring you can see below popped out whilst I was under the car, I had to guess where to put it back.

5th: Hard part over (kinda lol).

You then slot your new shiny short shifter through the hole and line up the holes. I put the bottom right bolt in loosely to help line up the other bolt holes,  then the other 3 loosely to hold it still.

Now its time to crawl back under the car and drop the front 2 back in place too (lots of swearing and bumped forehead is optional lol). I got them all finger tight then did the easy 4 then the front 2 nice and tight.

6th: reverse stages 1 to 4 and hey presto, one fitted short shifter.

This took me about an hour in total but I did start at 9 pm, it was about 2 degrees out side and my car was only jacked up about 8 inches (front wheels where resting on spare standard s13 rims as I couldn’t find my axle stands.

Hope this helps someone.

Jamie