I learned a valuable lesson yesterday.. After having some work done that required disconnecting the transmission I picked up the car from the dealer and started on my way hone.. Half way there I noticed that my shifter felt a bit weird. At first I thought, OMG they replaced my shifter with the stock one. The left-right travel was a lot more then I am use too. Then I discovered that I could not push the shifter down at all. Also found that 5th and 6th were really hard to find. Reverse was no longer protected by having to press the shifter down.

At this point I guessed that they installed the shifter in backwards so the reverse guard knob was pointing the wrong way. When I got home I took it apart and found my guess was right. After fixing the install job all was well.

I am not going to name the dealer since (with the exception of this experience) they have been really good.

Bottom line, The dealers are just people and can make stupid mistakes too. Hell, even I can make stupid mistakes from time to time. :SHOCKED:

This is exactly the reason why apprentices should be restricted to working on B Series utes and Mazda 3's......... ;)

I hope it still feels like it did before!

Ya, after I installed it correctly the shifter felt just right. It's even better actually since I removed the green cotton stuff in the shifter boot and part of the transmission work required changing the pilot bearing. Not sure which made the difference but there is less noise coming from the shifter area now.

Wow that could have been very dangerous.