Today, I wanted to reverse the operation of the gearstick so the cables come out the back, which, if works, it means the cables are much shorter, and also very tidy.

This is how it looks normally:

The important thing is that while the outlets are in the same place, the rods are different length. This means that the length distance will be amplified (in fact, doubled).

The other thing is that behind the lower rod, there's a strengthening buttres which will have to be removed.

The plan was to make it so if I found it didn't work, I could replace anything I did on it. Firstly, I welded a strengthening bar across the middle. This is because I'd be cutting one end of it quite a bit:

I then drilled a series of holes in a plate to make it the right diameter (24mm) for the mounting brackets. There is plenty of meat on the cable, so this is good enough.

This was my first idea - to angle it downwards so the cable will be close to the floor when it exits:

The only problem with this was that the side-to-side movement of the gearstick didn't appear to give even movement, so I decided to make it exit the same height as it's meant to. Luckily there are a couple of tapped holes (M8) that could be used to hold the brackets:

And then, the other side.

As you can see, they exit at completely different distances.

I then welded some extra strengthening braces to it all:

And then covered it with foam:

Tomorrow, I'll see if it works this way around - assuming the weather's okay (apparently it's meant to be raining).