Ok, here is what I have taken away from the discussion with the lead engineer.

1. We build the shifter to fit the CRX, Civic, Sol and Integra, so there has to be some looser tolerances. Now, with stockish exhaust it should fit all of those cars just fine.

2. Enter the heat shield. In the instructions, it should state heatshield mods may be necessary. 85% of guys I have talked with via email and PM have ditched them altogether. Others haven’t, and either cut, or banged out the shield to get a little extra clearance. Between those three methods, I think almost all consumers solve the heat shield issues. We are not done yet...

3. Enter bigger exhaust. This poses a problem, since when engineering the shifter we can/did not compensate for all exhaust sizes. It poses a big engineering challenge when this shifter fits 4 different cars. Unfortunately, this is something we can not re-design, since it may cause other issues across the 4 models. Now, I have a solution that should work well. You really do not need much more clearance, so you can either bend the metal hangers a tad or go find rubber exhaust hangers that will give you a little more space. This should take care of any lame rattles, since there will be no more contact with the exhaust pipe.

4. Bushing time. When adding a performance shifter, you will almost always bring more noise into the car. Replacing the bushings with an ES kit will help, but still, I do not think it will be OEM quiet. Personally, I’m willing to deal with a little bit of noise, especially if I took care of the blatant rattles described in #2 and #3. We are considering adding new bushings (3 pieces like Neuspeed) in later months. This will raise costs of course, but it should still keep us well under Neuspeed. Now, the noise that the N1 owners have been hearing, is unfortunately impossible to stop. The 'tuning fork' analogy loosley works, and the harmonics that certain exhaust make are sometimes amplified by the shifter. A fully dampened shifter would stop that, but that is cost prohibitive and really not an option. Fortunately, it seems like there are very very few cases where the exhaust causes such an issue.

5. OEM bend. We just fit a prototype to a B18 swap car yesterday. This is well underway, and will be hitting the streets sooner than we think. Again, this will fit the CRX, Civic, Teg and Sol, so we will have to find a happy medium that works for all cars. Believe me, you guys will like it

6. Feedback needed. Would you guys be willing to pay an extra, say, ~$15 if it includes the ES type bushings? My guess is yes. That price is *not* confirmed, but that should be an accurate guesstimate. Your answer to this question is very important at this state in product enhnacement, so I await and encourage all responses.

Thanks guys, :thumbup:
Mike