remove 2 13mm bolts & take out original gear stick.empi shifter should have 2 different rectangular spacers with it which go between the base & cab floor but if you bought 2nd hand then probably missing.spacing from the floor is critical.if you`ve got the spacing wrong between the floor & the base plate of the empi shifter you wont get all or any gears.best thing to do is arm yourself with a fistfull of washers & start with about 10mm of spacing on each bolt & work up from there.once you`ve got the correct spacing to get a nice gearchange it`s worth making a good spacer from aluminium or steel or i have used the spacer supplied with the cheap shift reducing kits that jk etc sell
ta mate, i do have 1 spacer there was a nice chap called tony and his wife jane camping next to us in a really sweet bay. anyway, he had an empi shift and found the spacer he didnt use in his van. he seemed to think that it was the smaller of the 2.
Hi recently bought my van with Empi gear shift fitted. Works fine but cannot select first gear with hand brake on as the stick gets too close to the hand brake lever, makes hill starts interesting! Any ideas?
You will need to adjust your handbrake starting with the star adjusters in the rear backing plates so there is hardly any play between the shoes and drums. Jack the van up and rotate the wheels by hand adjust..rotate...adjust...rotate until you find the point when the shoes are just binding...then back off the adjusters 2-3 clicks. That should take out a lot of movement in your handbrake. Then if needed adjust the cable under the belly pan. If you can get the handbrake on with 4-5 clicks that should do it,if not, you will need to adjust the shifter by undoing the two bolts and carefully sliding it backwards a couple of mm at a time, re tighten check you've still got your gears then repeat until you've got the clearance between first gear and handbrake full on. It is do able although I've found soon as your rear shoes start to wear, hill starts become a pain in the donkey again
^^^ that. Handbrake should only come out 6 clicks. When adjusting the star adjusters, get someone to pump the brake pedal every few clicks to centre the shoes.
Just stick it on ebay and keep your proper gear stick. You'd be better checking the bushes along the linkage
And when the shifter plate part wears or the reverse gate plate drops out you get to do some fiddly welding and bodging. Mine has both worn and fallen apart and been reassembled and welded. Still changes gear with the option of a hill start on a good day. Make sure the rest of the linkage works and you have a nice polyurethane based coupler on the nose of the gearbox too. Almost feels like new.
