JXB Performance Might-As-Well-Be-Gated Shifter Kit for Audi B8/8.5 S4/S5

Shifter Mounting Plate

The factory mounting plate that holds the shifter to the body of the car is made of flimsy plastic with a layer of sound-deadening foam between it and the vehicle’s center tunnel. The slider bushings between the plate and the shifter housing are made of soft flexible rubber with tons of slop that gets worse with age. During “enthusiastic” 1-2 shifting, it’s easy to put enough side load on the shift lever to compress the bushings and cause the OEM plate to flex, allowing the shift linkage to get hung up in the reverse track in the transmission. This causes that “sticky” spot you feel between first and second that often causes missed shifts and lost races. Shifter housing wear can add to this as well. No other shifter addresses this problem.

Not only does the JXB Billet Shifter Mounting Plate eliminate this issue, it gives an extremely solid feel to your shifter. The edges of the pattern are no longer soft, but make a solid thud, telling you you’ve arrived at the next gear.

Linkage Reinforcement

Everybody knows the stock linkage sucks. It doesn’t perform well, it sucks to swap out, and it’s expensive to replace. After an in-depth look at it, we came to the conclusion that it wasn’t all bad. There are plenty of good parts in it. The rod that runs from the shift lever to the crossrod is rigid as can be. The plastic coupling that holds the socket for the lower ball joint and the ball for the upper ball joint is very well-made. It has thick reinforcement ribs and doesn’t flex at all under load.

Where the wheels start to fall off is when we look at the ball joints and the crossrod. The lower ball joint in particular is housed in a flexible plastic and rubber socket that squishes and flexes under load. The plastic crossrod is flexible as can be. It flexes a great amount under load, leading to getting stuck in the reverse track more easily on the 1-2 shift, and generally adding slop to the shift pattern. The crossrod bushing is also fairly soft and can be seen flexing. We replaced that with a stiff polyurethane bushing held in place with a precision stainless shoulder bolt for a perfect no-slop no-flex interface. Though also plastic, the upper ball joint isn’t too bad, but since we’re addressing the crossrod, we decided to beef it up while we’re in there.

So instead of replacing the whole linkage, this kit transforms the stock linkage by replacing the 2 ball joint cups, the crossrod, and the crossrod bushing/bolt.

Short Shift Clamp

The JXB Short Shift Clamp gives you a substantial reduction in the length of the throw on your shifts at a fraction of the price of other short throw shifter kits. A typical short throw shifter kit comes with a shorter top side of the lever and a longer bottom side. This kit takes advantage of the available space below the OEM shift lever to extend the length of the OEM lever even longer than the other short throw shifters. This results in a massive throw reduction for a fraction of the price.

The weighted version adds 417g of mass to the bottom of the shifter, which is the equivalent of adding 260g at the knob. Keep in mind most weighted shift knobs are advertised as their total mass, not mass gained. For example a 240g knob only adds about 120g of mass. So our 260g equivalent mass gained is like having a 380g shift knob.