Every DIY I've seen for it is for the EVO II, not the III. There are some major differences between the two.

UUC's own online instructions are for the II not the III. Their printed instructions may have an error in them that I'm trying to confirm.

If it turns out that I'm right and they messed up their install instructions, this thing is coming out of the car and I'm going back to stock. I have never had so many problems with a mod in my life. Installing headers is easier than installing this rotten shift kit. :mad

Chuck, I have felt your pain and it is long drawn out but ultimately worth it. I'm guessing you had the thing installed per instructions and then realized that you had to put the upper half of the socket(?) together FIRST, which isn't even part of the instructions. Am I right? If you're like me, when you went to remove it to install the damn upper cup, you broke the bitch-clip and thus had to make a trip to the dealership for a new $.95 part and the counter guy laughed at you and pulled a jar full of 'em out from under the counter and said, "Take a few, or you'll be back." Then, when you went to intall theupper half of the cup, the little weak-sauce aluminum screws gave you huge fits and felt lie they were stripping (they weren't, btw). Oh, and how could I forget that the damn delrin bearings would quite fit in and I eventually ended up removing the whole thing a second (third?) time to press them in with a vise If you did the install yesterday, and did it in your driveway on jackstands, I bet you're also in a lot of pain, especially in your upper back and neck too.

However, after all of that I was so happy with the way mine shifted. In fact I was soo happy with it that I went and bought the DSSR and installed it too!! IN FACT, I was so happy with it, that when I bought my M3 I bought one with SMG!!! :D

:lol

I was up till 4am trying to get the car back together. I'm sure my pristine interior has some greasy handprints in a few places. Murphy came by to help me, as evidenced by all the things that happened.

- Those Delrin forward carrier bushings gave me fits. I had to remove the carrier and push the clip through several times before I was able to install the carrier and get the clip through it. That took half an hour.

- The shift lever uses UUC's much-vaunted "cartridge bearings", which is a two piece affair in the bottom of the lever, into which you have to slide a couple of stainless bushings. When you install the lever and go to put the rear pin of the selector rod through these bearings, it won't fit the first time. You'll have to pull the lever and the rod and do several (read: many) test fits until you "break in" the bearings somewhat. Then when you reinstall the lever you'll find that the pin fits in one side and pushes the bearing and bushing out the other. It takes patience and dexterity to convince all four pieces to stay in the lever while you push the pin through. At least an hour.

- Of course, this is assuming you have enough give in the selector rod to actually get it through the lever bearings. You'll probably have to disconnect the front of the rod to get the rear to stick through the lever. This was another hour of fitting. No way in hell could I imagine doing these two connections several times during the fitting process while using the DSSR. If it was so tight that it wouldn't go on once...

- I discovered after installing the carrier and the shift lever that the lever wouldn't stay up in the carrier. A quick trip to the instructions revealed that I had to put the bottom cup bearing in, a little white plastic affair. So the shift lever had to come out. Fought with the cartridge bearings to get the lever in, now fight to get them out. One bearing/bushing combo stayed on the selector rod, one stayed in the shift lever. Whatever.

- According to the UUC instructions, you slip the white plastic bearing into the carrier with it installed in the car. It doesn't work that way. The bearing has to go into the carrier before you put the height cup in it. So the carrier had to come out again.

- with the carrier reinstalled, you can't get easy access to the clip from the top anymore because the new height cup is in the way. So no cheating and prying the clip up from inside the car, which only took me a minute after I figured it out the first time. It took me over an hour to get the clip out and pull the carrier so I could install the bottom cup bearing. By this time my hands and wrists were aching and had swelled up a bit. And it was getting ready to rain.

- With the carrier rebuilt and back in, and the selector rod installed at both ends, it was time to hang the exhaust section that I should not have had to take down. Of course one of the forward nuts is blocked by the O2 sensor on the rear of the headers, so I had nearly no way to get the nut back on the bolt as I pushed it through the flange. Theres a boss on the nut side of the flange, so you can't just shove the nut on the flange and hold it in place while you poke the bolt through. You have to gently work the nut in there and hold it in place on top of the boss while you thread the bolt through the flange. I used a flare wrench because my regular open end 14mm wrench is MIA. After getting the nut and bolt tightened down, I realized that the flare wrench didn't have enough room to come off, and it couldn't slip off because well, its a flare wrench. After briefly debating leaving the wrench on the car or torching it off, I had to remove the nut once again and find a different way to get it back on. I did. One more hour lost.

- And finally, the "missing" part thing happened, as I couldn't find one of the copper nuts used on the rear of the exhaust section. Spent quite a bit of time looking, and then it started to rain. So gather up the tools, drop the car, and leave it sitting in my driveway in the rain. Wonderful.

So, I stuck it out and got the new shift setup in, minus the damn DSSR, which I will be sending back to UUC. If they don't take it back, I'm going to see how far I can throw it in the ocean.

But at least I didn't break the clip. That would have sent me over the edge.

Yeah, the f'ing clip almost resulted in serious bodily harm to certain people. When my smug-arse parts guy (who has become a friend over the years) pulled out the jar of bitch-clips I almost killed him. I swear I was reaching for his throat when the humor of the situation hit me. :rofl After that everything went together much easier. When I sold my 325 I took every mod off except the shifter. There was no way in hell I was going back in there. :D