Remedy to T-case shifter rattle

[ARedetzke]

I think that just about all of these first gen trucks have some sort of a rattle associated with the transfer case shifter. I have heard of people using bungee cords to hold it in a certain position to keep it from rattling so bad, but other than that, I think most of us have lived with it ( I hope I'm not the only poor sap with that dang rattle). Well a couple of days ago, while laying in bed waiting for my alarm to go off, I had an epiphany. I had just finished a few days earlier hooking the linkage back up (so I was intimately familiar with it by this time), and my initial idea was a miserable failure. So this is what I did the second time, and I would say it eliminated about 85% of the rattle in my shifter.
The linkage runs down through the floor board and hooks to the shift rails, mine is now kept in place by a hitch pin and a rubber washer. Below that is a flat plate that is essentially a guide for shifting into 4 high and 4 low. There are 2 slots in this plate, the shifter runs in one as a guide and the other is empty, the piece between these 2 slots is what the shifter rattles against (at least mine does). I went to the local hardware store and bought a piece of 3/4 ID vinyl hose ( you will need less than one foot, and could probably use a smaller ID hose, but I was guessing at the time) cut off a piece about 3 inches long and then cut it long ways. You need to slide this around the piece that divides the 2 slots, it should fit in the spot where the shifter rides while in 2 high. Zip tie it into place (kind of ghetto, I know). I then had to take a dremel tool and clearance a little out of the notch that is towards the 4 high side of the plate, so it would shift into 4 high. Be sure to test and make sure you can shift the t-case into all the gears. Voila, that's it. On my test drive, the rattle was all but gone. Hopefully this will last. The whole thing cost about $1, and you can't see it, so it's better than a bungee cord. Hopefully when you crawl under the truck you'll see how the shifter works, and this will be a lot clearer than it sounds. The arrow in the image below shows where the hose should be. Hope this works for some of you