Hate to give you the bad news but that step is the single hardest one out of the whole procedure. My reccomendation would be to find yourself a short and very thin flat head scredriver, and use a hammer to force the wedge between the clip and the plastic shifter box. Your box is going to incur damage no matter what you do on this step, so don't be afraid. Just sand off whatever burrs pop up from this step and you're good to go again. What you need to do is hammer and pry, hammer and pry, hammer and pry... all the way around. You're going to need a lot of leverage so what I did was put the passenger and driver seats all the way down so I could lay in there and get all the leverage I needed. It's going to take a long time and a lot of effort but it will eventually snap off, then it's cake from there on out. My TWM kit came with replacement clips that are a pretty easy to put back on, you only need one, but you definitely will bust your OEM clip so just toss it in the trash and use the newer one.

Good luck man, you'll love it!

 

dremel is your friend.

 

If you're going to use a dremel, be damn careful that you don't saw off the end of the metal rod running through the sidearm and the pivot cap. You'd pretty much be f'ked at that point.

 

Hey nobody said this was going to be a breeze . Here's what you need to get the cup off, and it's easier than you think. Get two bricks or cinder blocks of equal size and stand them up length wise side-by-side about an inch apart (big enough for the pivot ball to fit between them). Use the provided cup removal washer and place that on top of the bricks, just like the manual says. If you don't have a punch then I would get a long and thin bolt or a junky philips screwdriver you don't plan on using again. Stick the end of your hammering tool into the small hole on the cup and give it a good shot or two with a hammer and the stock shifter should pop right out. Regrease all the pivot points generously (but don't slather gobs of it on there), tap the cup back onto the lower ball pivot on the twm ss, and you're good to go to put it all back together. An important thing to note is that you make sure all the safety clips and side-arm spring are back to their original positions and well-secured before replacing the assembly cap and putting the console back on. The last thing you want to do is do it all over again!

 

You can place the cup tool in between two folding chairs and use a philips screwdriver and a hammer to tap it out.

A friend would help out in this situation to hold the shifter down~

 

haha duly noted... yea, i was just ranting at that time, so no offense to those blessed with tools!

anyway, thanks to everyone this whole episode is now complete! I trimmed the leather from the boot and installed EVERYTHING... and it feels GREAT! pretty much the perfect amount of throw and height that i was looking for...

ALSO, I wanted to say one last thing and dispel a myth...

for those MT drivers that fear your elbow banging into the armrest because of installing a short shifter... realize that your elbow is at a fixed distance from wherever it hangs from your shoulder. the only part of your arm that will be a bit lower is your forearm. henceforth, you won't be banging your elbow into the armrest, unless of course you were banging it anyway with the stock shifter. I've gone through short shifters before and never had this problem. so please, don't NOT buy a SS because of that.