The $75 eBay short shifter made my throws 30% shorter but the rattle at 3k rpm is making me lose my mind
Swapped the stock shifter in my 2013 GTI for a cheap short shift kit from eBay 3 weeks ago and honestly the throw difference is night and day. Was about 4 inches from 1st to 2nd, now it's closer to 2.5 and I can bang gears way faster. But somewhere around 3k rpm in 3rd and 4th there's this buzzing rattle that wasn't there before, and it's driving me up the wall on my commute down I-95. I already checked the linkage and it's tight, so is this just what you get with the cheap kits or did I miss something during install?
I always figured the rattle complaints were just people being picky about cheap parts but I put a $60 kit in my mk6 last year and that 3k buzz showed up within a week. Turned out the counterweight on the stock lever was hitting the new bracket, trimmed it with a dremel and the noise went away. Might be worth crawling under there and checking clearance before you blame the kit itself.