touche, I was just trying to say it's not a problem unless there's movement... and I googled the average arm weight, lol I honestly thought arms were heavier!

Actually, @billwot, you raise a good point about hard stops. I'm keeping my hand off until I know for sure but 30 years is plenty of time to come up with an engineered solution to the problem. Hmmm...

I really did ruin that B-210 gearbox. All me.

Really don't now how you did that. As I said in another thread, over the years I have abused many gearboxes in every way imagineable, and never broken one (except the '39 Ford box hooked to Chev small block...an 80 hp box behind a 250 hp engine.) I've broken U-joints and snapped axles, but never hurt a gearbox.


Have been around cars and autosports for over 50 years, and other than '50s hotrods, have never known anyone who broke a gearbox.

Just a few years of continuing to push the gearshift into the firewall like a wannabe racer. It was third gear like @extrashaky said. Eventually just started popping out because the fork and slider were too worn to fully engage the gear.

Guys - my car blew up today while I was riding in it. I had one hand on the shifter, one on the blinker and both feet on the horn. I have no idea what happened.

I have had a similar trans completely apart during a rebuild and I can tell you this for a fact:
1 - you cannot affect the synchros at all by resting your arm on the shift lever as they are fully engaged and stationary (wrt to the slider and gear) when the gear is fully engaged.
2 - After you shift, the detent ball & spring on the shift rod will hold the rod stationary and then as the slider spins it will self-center the shift fork so that it does not drag on the slider (there is still some slop even when the detent is holding the rod)
3 - IF you put forward or rearward pressure on the shift lever it WILL force the shift fork to drag on the slider and it will not be able to recenter itself.
4 - this will cause additional wear on the shift fork and the slider.

Whether the additional wear is significant in a modern transmission or not is the only question here.
Because there WILL BE additional wear that you could avoid by not resting your hand on the shifter.

We dont argue that resting yor foot on the brake pedal will wear the brakes out....

Thats funny because I have broken them, fixed them, broken them again.
One guy at the track goes through three times as many gear boxes as he does engines. I have definitely seen shift forks & sliders that were so worn in the slot that they could not be reused. Guess which gear is usually worn the most? 4th or 5th. WHY? because those are the gears that are most likely to have someone resting their hand on the shift lever for the longest durations...

I like how actual technical threads on here elicit very few responses from the community except for a a couple concise answers from respected members but then someone posts some theoretical BS topic like this and suddenly everyone is an expert.

Not a surprise. A tech thread draws a smaller crowd and if the info is valid and concise there is little room for theory or debate.
A topic like this,where the subject matter is not nearly as cut and dried will certainly draw a whole pile more theories out. Once people take sides the debate can rage on for weeks.
Oh, and several of the people responding here also contribute heavily to the tech threads so I am not sure what the "suddenly everyone is an expert" crack is all about.

They did come up with an engineered solution it's call an Automatic Transmission.

By side thrust I mean a thrust that is not vertical it could be fore and aft or left and right.

Lets look at the pic. The centerline of the shift knob is behind the pivot point. So even if you put a vertical load on the shift knob, due to the geometry, it will tend to push the shift rod forward.

As I have said before do as you like it's your tranny that's going to suffer not mine.

Lol you can't hurt the transmission by resting your hand on the shifter. Pushing or pulling on it yes, but just resting? No. Have you seen the insides of our transmission? What part would you actually be hurting by resting your hand there? Keep in mind we're talking about resting... Not pressing down on it with any amount of significant force.

The only bullshit people can come up with is "Well which gears do you think break most often?" Oh that's some definitive evidence right there.

Dumbest argument ever

Or even more earth shaking:
http://www.trademotion.com/sfimages/...mage194770.jpg

But that puts a load on the center console. It could break after years of resting your arm there.