As I mentioned in my
build thread, I recently 3d printed out some new shifter bushings for my 99 Chevy Metro.
Last night was the night to install them. Thankfully, the process was fairly painless. The biggest pain in the butt was getting the old bushings out.
Step one, jack the car up and this is what you should see. Thankfully, there is quite a bit of room to work around the exhaust. Nothing really looks bad visually (besides the rust, thanks Wisconsin salt), but if you feel that joint, it moves around a lot.
The next step is to remove the bolt. The linkage will just drop down out of the way. Now you can see the OEM bushings.
The OEM bushings are also made of a plastic material. I'd guess nylon or something similar. They are press fit (or maybe just rusted in place), so this was the only semi-difficult part. I ended up drilling them out. After I got them out, I cleaned up the hole.
Last, I put the new bushings in. They were a slight press fit. I ended up using my ratchet to pound them in, it worked well. I also lubed everything up with some grease I had laying around before bolting things back up.
The difference is night and day better. There is no slop anymore, you can MUCH more easily feel what gear you're going into, and there is no side to side slop when you're in neutral.
If any other Metro owners are interested, I can print you up a set of bushings for your car. Just shoot me a PM.