I've also been battling the vibrating/rattling gearshift lever on my TR3A
for some time now. A few years ago (maybe 20K miles) I replaced the
driveshaft u-joints and had the shaft balanced. Some months ago I got a
copy of the Service Bulletin (mine is a little different than the one Randal
posted) concerning gearshift rattles and performed the recommendations: I
enlarged the trapezoid hole in the lever cap, and also tried the short piece
of rubber tubing on the lever, neither of which made a bit of difference,
except for making it much more difficult to shift into reverse. I've
machined some shims/buffers out of Delrin for under the cap to prevent metal
to metal contact in that area. No luck. I tried a stiffer/weaker gear
lever spring. No difference. I tried hollowing out the gearshift knob and
epoxying in a metal slug for dampening, again no luck. On that note, I have
tried at least 4 different gear shift knobs (including an original hard
rubber one) with no change in the vibration. The vibration and resultant
chatter/rattle is much more sever when accelerating. I'm now into the habit
of steering with one hand and holding the gear lever with the other to
somewhat dampen the rattle. I'm kind of out of ideas, so I am following
this thread closely. Anyone have any other ideas? Is the torpedo-shaped
counter weight available anywhere? Does it really do anything? Couldn't I
just make one out of a slug of steel and fab a bracket of some sort, or does
it have to be a certain weight to cancel a specific harmonic? I dunno....
Any suggestions? Perhaps I need to revisit the driveshaft/u-joints?
Thanks for wading through this.
Dennis
>
> > There is a service bulletin (which
> > I don't seem to have handy, will try to post tonight) about
> > putting a piece of rubber hose on the shift lever inside the
> > spring.
>
> Found it, finally.
> http://goo.gl/Hpn6Rb
>
> > They also tried adding a brace (later on, TR4A
> > maybe) to the top cover, and even a rubber-mounted
> > counterweight on some models.
>
> According to the TR4 SPC, the brace was all TR4 (although there were two
> different versions); the counterweight only gearbox CT17815
> through CT35719.
>
> Randall
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