You know how a properly functioning car door will stay open once you get it past the little 'hump' in the hinge assembly? Now some times you have to give it a little extra force to close the door and you think to yourself 'shouldn't that be alot smoother?'.

Take that same line of questioning and apply it to the 5spd Avengers.

Now i've driven several manuals and even my dad's 1983 Chevette shifted smoother. When i drove my moms 96 Sentra, the shifter was moving a spoon through some hot oatmeal as far as the resistance goes. Same goes for the 93 Hyundai Excel I once had [hatchback gokart  ].

Now I expect to feel a slight resistance when I'm shifting gears because thats the safety of the design. It lets you know you're about to go into a gear [or out of]. However, I expect it to be a smooth motion.

Back to the door hinge analogy: You have the smooth shutting doors that give the right amount of resistance to move past that bump [Sentra, Chevette, Excel], and then you have the doors that might have been damaged somehow and they pop when you move past that point and require more force [Avenger].

What would cause the shifter to give this extra resistance? It's like when your pressing a coin down onto another coin at the edge and make the bottom coin flip. You feel when it snaps and the top coin hits the table? I guess thats a better analogy.

Any ideas guys?

97 ES

YAY!! i'm not going crazy! lol

So Daes, which one has the shorty? the Smooth one or the Clunky one?

Another thing, does anyone [who's reading this of course] know where all the bushings are that are related to the shifter? If so, can you draw a diagram or point them out with arrows in a photo?

I had my shift linkage go bad.  It shifted like that before it completely went (couldn't shift out of third) I replaced the linkage and now it shifts like butter.  The cable just started separating on the bad one.  Don't know why.

Mine just started unraveling.  It could be anywhere along the line.  It's not too hard to pull them out, and see if they're splitting.