NSG370 inner shift boot repair

$150? That sounds too high, it is a much needed piece though. I drove from VA to CO and back with 10 days of wheeling in the middle and the amount of heat thrown off is un believable. Without that “boot” it all comes up into the passenger compartment and is brutal.... There was a link on here somewhere for stock MOPAR parts, I can not seem to find it now, but I thought I paid around $70 for that two years ago......

Moparpartsoverstock.com

I just paid $120 for one.

It’s part number 52059661AB inner shift boot. I bought mine 2 years ago for $75 from ebay. Don’t see any going for that price anymore though. I’m not sure you can repair it. Maybe use an old inner tube and some rubber cement. It’s so far gone you aren’t really risking ruining anything by trying.

I'm looking at the same situation - wondering if I can fabricobble a generic shift boot over it. The cheapest I've found is $120, and I haven't yet shopped shipping charges. That's complete highway robbery!

Zorba said:

I'm looking at the same situation - wondering if I can fabricobble a generic shift boot over it. The cheapest I've found is $120, and I haven't yet shopped shipping charges. That's complete highway robbery!

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Wouldn't take much to get this in there.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000CMGZSW/?tag=wranglerorg-20

... at 1/5th the price and it would probably last longer. Thank you.

Zorba said:

... at 1/5th the price and it would probably last longer. Thank you.

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I'd be more inclined to try the Dorman version for the Peterbilt but I'm skeered the diameter of the base would be too large. The larger you can get the base, the less the movement that tears up the rubber.

Yea, I need to get back in and make some measurements and see what the min/max would be. Need to figure out if the shaft end should go above or below the "lump" as well - that would also have a bearing on what boot would be best. The stock boot seems to be made to fail to my eye...

Zorba said:

Yea, I need to get back in and make some measurements and see what the min/max would be. Need to figure out if the shaft end should go above or below the "lump" as well - that would also have a bearing on what boot would be best. The stock boot seems to be made to fail to my eye...

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If you will do what I said and slide that boot up, you'll fully understand.

No doubt - just a matter of priorities. It'll be a bit before I'm back in that way - I have a MAJOR oil pain gasket leak to deal with.

Just installed a 52059661AB in mine. Was $118 or so. Way more than it should be, but my hair is slowly growing back on my right leg that was burned off by the engine heat.

Sure Mr Blaine's solution would work too. My plate was butchered by the PO who chopped it up after a t case drop install I would surmise. Needed a new one.

I got mine for $70 earlier in the year from ebay and barely got around to installing it a week ago. Part number is 52059661AC. Google shopping seems to show quite a few around $120.

At least yours isn't as bad as mine was

What came up for me was the same ol thing for $179!

It looks like you could just apoxy a plunger to the original boot and call it good. I'd take a knife to something like this, cut to fit, and glue them together.



It's rubber buried in the dash where nobody can see it. You may not even need the glue part to keep most of the heat and dirt out if you overlap the rubber.

I recently ordered the boot that @astjp2 linked to, and I made it work, but not without some reasonably over-engineered and under-thought-out modifications. I forgot to take pictures, so use your imagination. This is how I did mine.:

1. Remove the shift knob from the transmission shifter. Mine is an aftermarket RockNob, so it comes off with an Allen wrench and some tiny set screws. Your's will likely be different.
2. Remove the outer shift boot. The plastic base for it is held on with body clips, so it's pretty easy just to pop it out.
3. Remove the center console; 10mm bolt under the front cup holder, and another next to the shifter inside the console.
4. Remove all of the 10mm bolts around the edge of the inner boot assembly. I think there are 7, but I could be wrong.
5. You'll have to loosen the 8mm bolts on the transfer case shifter bracket, since two of the screw holes for the inner boot assembly are sandwiched between the bracket and the tub.
6. The inner boot assembly should then come up. Keep in mind that there's a thin gasket that runs the underside of it, and it is designed to stick to the assembly, so try to lift it up when you're removing it, and placing it down when installing, as opposed to sliding it.

Now, from here, if you bought yourself the Mopar replacement, assembly is just the reverse of removal. I, however, took the hard route.

The inner boot assembly is molded in such a way that the main, rigid part is hard plastic, and the boot itself is rubber, and put together to be a single unit.

I cut the rubber part out completely, since it was in tatters. I then took two pieces of some scrap 1/8" aluminum that I had and cut it into strips about an inch wide and about four inches long. There's a ridge that runs outside the edge of where the rubber was. I cut pieces of that away, along with the lip of the hole, so that I could place those strips down flat along the top and bottom edge. With some pre-drilled holes, you can use machine screws to attach them to the plastic, and then, in turn, attach, the boot to the aluminum.

I then ran a bead of black RTV along the underside of the seam. There was one spot on the top where there was still a hole about a half an inch wide and an inch long, so I cut a piece of the old rubber boot to fit, and RTV'd it into place. After allowing the whole assembly to cure, I put everything back together.

When shifting, you can hear some occasional slight popping noises where the accordion creases in the boot are bending in ways they weren't set up for, but it's very subtle, and probably not even perceptible with the vehicle started.

How long will it last? Dunno, but I was in a building mood this weekend, and figured "what the hell". Except for the boot itself, everything else was just scrap stuff I had lying around the workshop.