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Original second owner 911 Carrera RS, now owned by the State of Art Collection and driven by Gijs van Lennep in last weekend’s Porsche Classic Challenge 2012.

In our last post about modifying your early 911 in a reversible way we covered suspension set up and tires. Today we cover shifting and interior mods.

If there is anything that annoys in a well cared for classic, then it must be a sloppy gearshift. The original shifter set up of both the 901 and 915 transmissions was quite solid and can be restored by addressing the right areas. However, whilst you’re at it, you might consider going all the way and changing just a bit more than the original materials allow you to do.

First you need to understand the weak points in the shift set up. They consist of all the points that provide some flex when the shift lever is moved. Due to the leverage the shifter creates, versus the small inputs the gearbox needs to shift gears, precision is required all the way through the motion to feel right and tight. Imprecision is usually caused as follows.

1. The lever sits inside a hard plastic cup at the front of the shift rod. After 40 years this cup will be quite brittle and usually is at least worn.
2. In the tunnel, just behind the shifter base, the shift rod runs through an eye, lined with hard plastic. This item is known to crack due to age and will limit the number of gears you can reach.
3. The shift rod connects to the gearbox input rod with a joint, which originally is lined with plastic. Same story: it wears and ultimately cracks. More imprecision.
4. The gearbox itself is hinged in two mounts lined with rubber pillows. There’s quite a lot of rubber there and although there’s some reduction in noise and vibration, there’s also play in there. More imprecision.
5. As the gearbox is attached to the engine, forming a single large entity weighing nearly 200 kilo’s, there is a lot of momentum swinging in the tail, especially because the engine is mounted in rubber engine mounts. Take a corner and the weight of engine and gearbox gravitate outward. Not only does it make the car feel a little twitchy in corners, it also adds to less precision in shifting.

So what to do about this?

We run a range of WEVO products in our street and race cars which solve all these matters and are completely reversible. You don’t need to apply all of them to sense an improvement, but you can go stage by stage. The first combination I would advise is the shifter/precision shift joint combo added with a billet clamp and add nice shift knob. For an original look go for the Classic shifters, which come with a crush sleeve so you can fit the original shift knob. On the outside noboby sees there is WEVO precision in there, but you still get the 30% throw reduction and a precise feel.

Next would be to replace the engine mounts by the Blue variety Semi Solid items. There is hardly any reverberations beyond standard, but the whole car feels tighter and shifting is further improved. And lastly you can change the transmission mounts. These are either a direct replacement, in the case of the 69-73 cars (same products as the engine mounts) or a fabrication option. This completes the transformation of your early 911.

To get a feel for the change you should watch this video inside our race car and note the shifting action. Put your speakers up and enjoy the precision and the noise from the exhaust and intake!