Review: 5X Racing Aluminum Shifter Bushing

[Blueiii]

I picked this up as part of the group buy they offered a year ago, even before having a Miata. I installed it about 2 weeks ago... And will be removing it shortly.

Unlike the delrin bushing, the aluminum bushing does not snap over the shifter arm properly. I contacted 5X about this and they said to allow it to rest around the ball and drop it in. I did as they suggested and buttoned everything up. Compared to the delrin bushing I had in it, which was in decent condition, the 5X provided no noticeable increase in the precision of the shifts. Instead, it fit loosely, and rattles like crazy. The rattling "buzz" coming from inside my turret is driving me nuts. After a few weeks, I am removing this and putting the factory delrin bushing back in.

[Doward]

You have fluid in the turret, correct? Not sure how it can buzz unless its dry.

For what its worth, I have one of these too. My only gripe is that geting in to reverse is a major pita.

[Blueiii]

Yup, turret was full. I thought the exact same thing - how can it buzz with oil between it? Yet somehow it did. I had actually contacted 5X before installing it because it was so grossly oversized. Oh well. . . $10 out of my pocket.

[5X Racing]

I picked this up as part of the group buy they offered a year ago, even before having a Miata. I installed it about 2 weeks ago... And will be removing it shortly.

Unlike the delrin bushing, the aluminum bushing does not snap over the shifter arm properly. I contacted 5X about this and they said to allow it to rest around the ball and drop it in. I did as they suggested and buttoned everything up. Compared to the delrin bushing I had in it, which was in decent condition, the 5X provided no noticeable increase in the precision of the shifts. Instead, it fit loosely, and rattles like crazy. The rattling "buzz" coming from inside my turret is driving me nuts. After a few weeks, I am removing this and putting the factory delrin bushing back in.

Just wanted to chime in on this review, hopefully shed some light on your specific situation straight from the source. We've had a few bushing customers contact us and tell us that their bushings fit either too loose (such as yours), or too tight. While there are some tolerance variations in the machining of some of our bushings, it's virtually impossible for us to tell if the bushing we send out is going to fit perfectly on the customers shifter. We have a shift lever here that we use to test fit each bushing we send out, if it fits poorly, then we find another one that fits perfect. Sometimes what fits perfect here on our test shifter doesn't translate to a perfect fit on the customers end, which sucks, but we offer a solution. When a customer mentions that the bushing they received was a poor fit, we always offer a chance for a replacement because we have several bushings here in which the tolerances are leaning on the loose side (for the bushings that are too tight for the customer) and bushings that are tighter than others (for the customers that have a loose fitting problem).

It sounds as if you've already found a solution in your old delrin bushing, but if you want to return or exchange your bushing we'd be happy to accommodate you either way. I'm not sure if you (or us) proposed this when you contacted us, but I apologize if we missed the opportunity to offer this to you.

FWIW, the "snap-in" feature of the OEM plastic bushing is an extremely difficult (if not impossible) thing to achieve on an aluminum part, since aluminum doesn't flex like an OEM plastic or even a delrin bushing. We are seeking a new machine shop to make our next batch, one that can reduce the variances in tolerance, which caused your issue. We'll look into making a more "snapable" bushing to ease install as we always are looking to improve on our products from feedback such as this. Our original concept with this bushing was to replicate an OEM bushing but using a material that wouldn't crack and break under the stresses of racing (we used to burn through the plastic ones very quickly in our race cars). Anything we can do to make it better is certainly something we'll research and change if possible.

Hope this helps! Thanks for your feedback!
John Adamczyk
Owner/President 5X Racing LLC