The theory behind this DIY is that over time the grease on the shifter assembly becomes contaminated, dries out and the plastic parts begin to wear down. The shifter then becomes notchy and sloppy. By replacing a few particular parts along with fresh grease you can get the shifter back to sliding smoothly between gears improving the driving feel.

I’ve had the parts sitting around at home for a while now but haven’t been in a rush to install as my shifter still feels quite good. I have low kms on my S2000 so maybe this contributes to that?

– Shifter assembly removed with the old parts still attached. There wasn’t much grease on the assembly and it was quite dry and lumpy. The new parts a laid out at the bottom ready to be swapped over.

The parts needed are:
1x change lever ball #54110-S2A-003
1x reverse lockout spring #54117-S2A-003
1x plastic collar bushing #54111-S2A-003
Or
1x aftermarket metal collar (car garage amis/seeker/renegade etc)

I opted for the car garage amis metal collar as I had read all about the benefits of the metal collar over the oem plastic one and wanted to test out the results. A metal collar is stronger and doesn’t deform over time like the plastic version meaning your shifter feels better for longer.

– Car garage amis metal shift collar.

With some free time over the weekend I decided to finally tackle the job. It’s a very straight forward DIY and took maybe half an hour to complete. I used this thread on s2ki which is really detailed and has some great pictures to go with it.
http://www.s2ki.com/forums/s2000-under-hood-22/regrease-shifter-diy-772277/

– Upon removal it was surprising to see that my oem plastic collar was cracked. 

– Shifter assembly put back together with the new parts and regreased.

– With the shifter assembly removed you are able to clean up the grease inside the gearbox area and then apply the fresh grease. The featured link calls for Honda OEM Urea grease but any high temp stuff will work fine.

So the results. After swapping in the new oem parts and the metal collar along with fresh grease the shifter is a little smoother going between gears. There is a more direct feel and the movement feels more solid so i put this down to the metal collar but given that my grease was pretty dry and the OEM plastic collar was cracked the difference isn’t all that crazy. Much less than what i was expecting anyway. Maybe i just read too many “OMG i did this swap and my shifter is absolutely amazing now!” comments and was expecting too much?

My shifter didn’t crunch previously and still felt nice so maybe that also contributes to the lacklustre results. Maybe if i had’ve waited longer until the shifter became worse the change would be more drastic and I’d be here raving on about how awesome this DIY is too. Knowing what i know now though I’d recommend people refresh their grease and if you want to replace the parts just get new OEM ones. The three OEM pieces total $13AUD whereas the car garage amis collar is $60AUD alone.

UPDATE 06/09/17 – I competed at H Nats on the weekend and put the car through its paces and must comment on how nice the shifter felt all weekend. Very solid feel with shifting and no matter the situation i was in when shifting, straight, mid corner etc the shifter slide right into gear with no issues or play.