[Dave Toce]

I called Nic at Long today and he gave me his take on things. One of his local customerr had this happen on a Jerico DR4 box recently that had a lot of runs on it sort of like mine. What they traced the problem back to was the detent bullets being worn. What happens is that there was enough moving inertia of the 1/2 slider and fork to overcome the detent and it would engage 1st again on the 2 to 3 shift. I have had my Jerico box apart many times and I never gave the wear on the detent bullets any thought. I believe how to fix the problem is to preload the detent bullets as much as you can to increase the force that the detent bullet has on the internal sliding shifter shaft rail. You can do this by tightening down the allen set screws on the top of the case that hold in the detent springs. I did this when I got home from work and it increased the required force to move and shift from one gear to the next on the 1st and 2nd by a lot. I had the allen set screw almost flush to the top of the case which allowed a very easy movement of the 1/2 shift fork. By tightening the set screw down I believe could be the answer along with keeping the shifter lubed up. Nic stated they were looking into the idea of putting a real 1st gear lockout on the shifter like the 5 speed shifters have. He told me to check back with them in a few weeks because they might have something ready then.

Dave