So underneath the car first thing I did was remove the exhaust heatshield. If you’re fussed about keeping this it’s probably worth squirting the fixings with WD40 or similar a little while before attempting to remove it, but every single stud snapped off on mine so I decided to bin the front section. I hope my Magnex system and decat won’t create as much heat as a standard system and cat so we’ll see. With the heatshield off you can see the base of the lever where it attatches to the selector arm. Mine was refitted from inside the car as I was playing with the quickshift but yours will already be disconnected here.
So once disconnected at the back, the only thing holding the front of the bar on is the gear rods. These can be popped off their sockets using an open ended spanner:
And the bar can then be slid off the nylon ball on the control arm:
And pulled out forwards underneath the engine:
The control arm is held on with two 13mm nuts, one in each corner. There is a bracing strut to the top wishbone plate that needs to be moved first, the top bolt can be removed then if the bottom 16mm nut is slackened it can be pivoted enough to allow the control arm to be unbolted and removed:
Then there’s enough space to manoeuvre it out:
The old vs the new, the new nylon ball fits into the new bush nice and snug with no movement whereas the old ones had half an inch of play!
Before putting them back on, I decided to change the roll pin in the arm on the gearbox next while I had extra room. If you’re lucky and your arm has no play in it you won’t need to do this, but it wears on 99% of Saxos so chances are yours will be gone too!