Big Poppa

Steeda has put it's hat in the ring and came out with a shifter brace much like Barton's but with two bushings to choose from.

Ethanjbeau

Forgive my ignorance, but what does this do?

JAJ

While it's tempting to say "It improves your lap/elapsed times by removing unnecessary weight from your wallet", it actually improves the accuracy of the shifter mechanism on the MT82 under load and hard braking.

There's a long thread about this on AFM that explains it. Basically, the soft-ish engine and transmission mounts, the softly sprung remote shifter box and a clutch that doesn't always disengage fully conspire to make it hard to shift the transmission properly under hard acceleration, cornering or braking. The shifter box gets out of line with the transmission and you find yourself stuck between gears trying to slot the gear you want next.

This bracket addresses one aspect of the problem by reducing the movement of the shifter box assembly. It pins the rear-most mounting point in place with a stiffer bushing than stock. This improves the shifting situation, although the experts say that to really nail it, you need new motor mounts, a new rear transmission mount and an upgraded clutch with upgraded clutch hydraulics. The bracket does about 80% of the job at a pretty modest price.

I have this bracket from JHR with a machined Delrin bushing. It cleans up the shifting a lot, but at the expense of extra driveline noise in the interior. The selectable bushing on the Steeda part allows you to choose between high noise and solid shifting or lower noise and good shifting. Changing the bracket is a ten-minute job from under the car. Video is avalailable on the Barton website.

RobDis