dakota shifter arm....fixed!

[70charginglizard]

Well I had a little problem with my dakota the other day.
The shifter arm handle on the column broke. Kinda sucked because it's got an over drive button at the end of it thats wired all the way into the steering column and the wire busted at the handle brake and so I had to replace the whole thing arm and all. Tried to gather information from the dakota usa web site as to how to fix because for some odd reason the dakota manual I had didn't explain at all what I had to do to replace it. But didn't get much feed back from the members there either. I think when it comes to vehicles with airbags it intimidates people and they end up just paying top dollar to have the dealers do these kind of fixes. Well with the part costing 68 bucks and the dealer installation cost being almost 100 bucks my vote was to dig in and try to do it myself. I was told that the airbags are pretty safe as long as the batteries disconnected, so I made sure to do that first. Removed all the access panels surrounding the shift arm, drilled out the retaining pin. diconnected the overdrive switch, put in the new shifter arm assy, installed a new retainer pin, pluged in the new overdrive switch wire connection, put back all the access panels,  and connected the battery back up.....Presto. Fixed!

Excellant. Now with all the money I saved I can go get some cold beer.

Lesson learned. Just because most people are afraid to do something that seems complicated to most doesn't mean you should be afraid to attempt it yourself. You just might suprise yourself. 

[CB]

cool story man, I wish I had the skills to do a front end rebuild on the 69....could safe me a couple 100 easy

[chrisII]

a front end rebuild is pretty much a no brain job. you do nead a couple special tools (tie rod seporator (pickle fork)) and the socket for the upper ball joints and a big azz breaker bar. often times an 1/16 cold chisel, and roll pin punch come in handy removing cotter pins. but ive ben known to just break em off , slide the socket over and spin off the nut (impact is nice but not required) upper and lower bushings can also be a bear, but its pretty much grunt work. its all pretty simple, yes you will nead an alignment right away , but you can easly do the rest. however you may invest a couple hundred in tools. if you have to buy the ball joint socket it may cost ya $60 or more.

  I know off topic, but i dont wana see somebody pay somebody to do something they would like to do themself.