cable pops off shifter
 

the car has always shifted fine untill last night. i went to go into 3rd getting on the highway and the right cable popped off of the ball on the shifter, somehow i ended up in 4th gear and while cruising down the highway on the wya home i managed to fiddle with the cables enough to where i knocked it into neutral... pulled over and clipped it back on, drove around for a bit no problems... later on in the night while about a mile from my house i decided to try hitting 3rd again... exact same result except this time i just went to neutral. easily fixed as it was the time before...

is there something that everyone does to these cars to fix this? that cable seems to clip on and off of the shifter a bit too easy in my opinion, i fixed it thru the cup holder hole in the center console... id really rather not have to put a shifter in the car because the stock shifter works fine for me...

Idk havnt had that yet just do something custom. Look at it and see if u can find a solution like jbweld or something lol

im considering breaking out the zip ties... pretty sure i'd have to rip the center console out tho.

Pull it apart and I bet it's broken inside that lil cup piece. I made a thread about this, I had the same issue. There is a temp fix and a place on Ebay that will sell you a new connector piece. :)

Try a local j yard. Any year manual cobalt will have that little piece you need. Once it pops off it only gets worse and worse

It's a 2010, why $%&^ with it yourself?

Warranty time :)

^^^ thats wat i was thinking

It happened to me. I just popped it back in pretty hard and it's stuck ever since. If you car is a 2010 just let GM worry about it

its a little bullshit item and if i take it in for warranty they'll probably want to keep it all day... it just happened 2 times again, once while downshifting on an exit ramp and once while sitting in the parkinglot seeing how little force it took to come off...

*edit*
dropping it off at 9am tomorrow... we'll see how long it takes them... untill then i get to drive my sisters Hyundai Elantra :-/

i am so envious of you now rollin in that elantra all day :cool:

TWM is making clamps for the shift linkage:guns:

yeah but they arent out yet... thats the first thing i looked into lol... im gonna see if i can figure out a way to zip tie them or make my own clamps...

dropped it off and told them what was up... having them do an oil change while its there since im lazy and dont feel like chasing down that weird ass filter.

Any eta on these twm clamps?

only thing ive found is "late summer" lol...

dropped the car off at 8:45 this morning, called at 3:15pm and they were still messing with it... how hard can it be to pull the center console off, unclip that piece of plastic, slap another one on and slap it back together... im assuming that oil change takes about 15 minutes for them to do...

btw, its the slowest car known to man.. i thought my cobalt was gutless out of boost since i sold my car on a thursday, and bummed a ride to work on friday then drove my friends Ion Redline to the dealer and havent driven anything since.... wow, that hyundai makes my cobalt feel like its got a big block in it and my old mustang must have been an effin mountain motor! lol

they can't just get another plastic piece that broke, they have to order the entire shifer assembly from gm, so you will be waiting. I called the dealer first to order that little plastic piece, and was told can't order just that piece.

Trust me I went to the dealer, they told me a week and a half till they could look at it. I said f that, went to a j yard, got the plastic piece i needed, and fixed it myself.

so far so good, but I will pick up some clamps when they come out

I haven't had any problems finding the filter. All the parts houses have them. I've seen them but haven't bought them. I buy all my stuff from Amsoil so I have no problem at all.

And the shifter problem is most likely the cable adjustment at the shifter. The cable has to hit it's hard stop at the same time as the cable hits IT's hard stop. If they're misadjusted the shifter will put undue strain on the cable connector, it's the weak link in the transmission control systen, and it will pop off. The shifter continues to pull on the cable and the cable can't move any further and the plastic connector pops open on the cable while the shifter is still pulling on it. I had it happen to me. I fixed it in ten minutes and haven't had a problem since. But that's just MY experience.

is there a write up on these stops and how to adjust them? i'm all for shifter stops...

is this one of those things where im gonna have to buy a shifter for or do i get to keep the nice stockness..

The stock shifter comes from the factory adjusted close enough to get the transmission from one gear to the other and back again. They can't take the time to fine tune each one to the inevitable variables from one car to another. Adjusting them is, basically, a trial and error thing. You can disconnect either cable clip, while in neutral and move the shifter to it's full range front to back or side to side, depending on which cable you're going to adjust. I can never remember which cable is which but I THINK the left cabel is for front to back motion. Then adjust and try, adjust and try, till the cable and the shifter are centered at the same time. When I installed my TWM shifter, which I highly recommend, I was having a problenm with hard shifting. I called TWM and spoke with ? and he outlined what to do to fix it. Somewhere on their website they give some instructions on how to do this.

Here. Found it.

http://www.twmperformance.com/manual...all-manual.pdf

It's really not as difficult as it looks or sounds.

Good luck.

OH! And when you do the cable that moves left to right don't forget to allow for reverse.

lol i work as a car salesman and i just sold a used 06 elantra the other day and i know exactly what you mean. i could run 60 before it could reach 60

my rental 4 door cobalt makes the hyundai feel like my SS lol

The left cable is for the side to side movement and the right cable is for the front to back movement. It is very important that both cables are properly adjusted so the shifter works correctly. Many time, it's not even adjusted correctly from the factory...

That being said, the plastic connector is actually a weak link, even when the cables are adjusted. This is why we are working on a better part.

Speaking of which, how many people would be interested in such a part? Basically a metal connector instead of the stock plastic part, and a better attachment point to the shifter.

Frank
Team TWM Performance

Count me in Frank.

i would buy them and a short throw if you get this clamping system done by the 13th for your 10% off sale!

but I will buy the clamps regardless

Frank, my names Frank also, can i have one for free? being that where both frank. i think a lot of ppll would be interested its a common problem. Only thing i see about it being potential bad is that once thats a stronge connection what would give inlou of that? could it result in bent shift fork? messed up cables? messed up roll pin? instead of making that connection better i think you guys should make some sort of bolt in shifter stops