Northstar 6 Speed (Page 3/20) HTXtremes SEP 26, 07:44 PM Great information, I'm following very close. I'm working on a 4.0 Aurora with twin turbos and the six speed! So your tread is helping me along. Great built! mcaanda SEP 27, 10:06 PM Subscribing; great thread. Zac - you have an E-mail / PM coming at ya shortly. --Allen Zac88GT SEP 29, 10:48 AM Last night I was able to modify the 4-speed shifter that i picked up last weekend and make the shift cable bracket for the transmission. Since i will be using two getrag 5-speed select cables, the shift cable mount on the shifter had to be moved closer to the shifter by 1.5". This was make sure the cable was in the middle of it's travel range when the shift lever was centered. In josephs 6-speed thread he just cut the tab off of the shift lever so it could no longer hit the stops, this would have been easier but i didn't want to do it because i thought it would change the position of the shifter in the car, and i was very comfortable with it's original location. This is the shift lever in the centered position. Here you can see the line marked 1.5" forward of the face of the mount. The face of the cable bracket should by 5/8" from the bend just aft of the bolt holes for another reference. And the bracket hole should be centered on the outside edge of the square mounting plate. After cutting. After welding. Painted with gussets. Next the limit slots on the shifter had to be elongated towards the drivers side to make room for a 5/6 gate. After a little measuring i figure the shifter requires about .5" travel per gate so 1.5" min total cable travel is required. Stock is about 1.2". The shifter is dissassembled by removing the c clip from the shifter and removing the lever. The two c clips are then removed from the limiting shaft at the back and the shaft is slid backwards. Unhook the spring and pull the bell crank mechanism up off the shaft. Discard the spring and remove the long bolt holding the other part of the shifter on. You can now get enough angle to slide the lower pin out the front. These are the oringal slots. These are the slots after elongation. It wont take very much material removal to increase the cable travel. With the material that i removed i now have 1.75" of cable travel. Next was to build the shifter cable bracket. I started with a piece of angle iron that i ground and drilled holes in to get it to bolt to the base of the shift shaft. After that I pretty much just eyeballed the cable locations working around my CAI. Nothing to technical i can say about it, it's just something you have to get in the right position and weld. When making the bracket insert the pin into the shift mechanism on the transmission. This will hold it in between gears in the 1-2 gate. You can then make the bracket with the cables connected and the shifter up against the reverse lock out and in between gears. My original select cable seems a little stiff, so i will try and lubricate it up to make it better and use it as the shift cable. The new one from the fiero store will be the select cable. I was thinking of duct taping a vacuum cleaner to the end of the stiff cable and using the vacuum to draw some silicone lubricant all the way through the cable. If you guys have any idea of a good way lube the cable let me know. Zac88GT SEP 30, 04:26 PM My original engine mount i had made while using the getrag wasn't going to work. It was in the way of the intermediate shaft and the cv axle. You can see the original mount and location here. The intermediate shaft bearing is in almost the exact same area so i had to find a way to encorporate both the engine mount and bearing support into one piece. It turned out pretty good and i'm happy with it, only downside is it's fairly heavy, probably 2 lbs or so, hahaha. As stated before the intermediate shaft that i am using is from an 05 cobalt SS supercharged. I started off by drilling and tapping two holes 1.875" apart into .75" solid square stock. I then bolted this to the intermediate shaft and found that if you could clamp it with vice grips to the block it lined the shaft right up and would spin easily. I then made a plate for the top to bolt holes and spacers to weld on the backside to space it out the required distance. I tacked and welded this on and made a plate with a slight bend in it to run down to the lower bolt and the footing for the engine mount. I tacked that on aswell as the footing. Then i made a plate to extend to singular bearing bolt hole and bolted this in place. I tacked this in place as well as a gusset to run along the top. Removed everything and welded it up. I cleaned it up with a little trimming and grinding and painted it. There are a couple of tricks to putting it in because the area is so confined. The mount has to go in after the intermediate shaft is in place and the intermediate shaft must be bolted to the mount before the lower engine mount bolt can go in. The bearing cap must also be removed before the lower bolt can go in and I am limited to using an open end wrench to tighten it. Here you can see some of the tight clearances in between the mount, intermediate shaft, and cv end. The good news is that aside from the flywheel adapter and axles, all of the tricky parts of the swap are pretty well done. IT CAN BE DONE!, wohoo. One small clearance issue to take note of is after the axles come together and the bands are crimped arouned the cv boots, the nub formed by crimping is large enough it will interfere with the block. Pound the nub flat with a hammer and all should be good. fieroguru SEP 30, 06:45 PM Love the metal fabrication! Good job on the build! Joseph Upson SEP 30, 08:13 PM I didn't bother checking both forward and backward stops on the shifter. When I noticed I needed more travel for the even gears I cut the stop for the shifter, but if I understand what you did correctly I apparently had more forward travel than what was necessary in which case I could have gone to my bracket at the tranny instead, realizing how iffy things can get I made my bracket for the cables at the transmission adjustable so I probably could have loosened the gear select mount and moved it to the appropriate location. I still have the extra shift lever from the 5 spd shifter I butchered, especially since the stop removal allows for a little shaky feel when selecting the even gears and if you are not careful slamming a gear or two may damage the cable since it would absorb all of the stopping force. Zac88GT SEP 30, 08:22 PM Even with my modification to the shifter i think i'm going to put in a new stop for the odd gears, as it is right now the cable is what stops it. Zac88GT SEP 30, 08:55 PM OK, so i decided i wasn't entirely happy with my shifter. When slamming it back into an even gear (2-4-6) it would stop on the cupped end of the shifter cable on the tranny, not a big deal. But when i slammed it into an odd gear (R-1-3-5) the cable would be close to it's limit of travel and kink at the end. That i decided should definatly be corrected, and while i'm in there i might as well fix the other stop too. So basically i just welded a 3/16" thick tab infront of the original pin for the odd gear stop and then built the weld up and used that for the even gear stop as seen here. Works like a charm, no more kinks and no bottoming out. Perfect! Zac88GT OCT 01, 06:58 PM I got my select cable from the fiero store today. Looks and feels really good. Only problem is the transmission end has a slightly different guide tube on the end and was contacting the shifter on the transmission when trying to pull it into the reverse gate. Simple fix was just to grind a little bit of a releaf into the shifter part. The other strange thing is that the cupped trasmission end of the cable came with a dollop of grease inside it, but mixed in with the grease were a bunch of metal shavings, like swarf from drilling! Just goes to show you should always inspect everything you buy very carefully no matter what it is. buds OCT 01, 10:16 PM Great thread....You will have the ultimate setup once your done....Nice welds 2