Woohoo, I was able to get the stripped bolt out of the shift arm. The head was so messed up a 1/4 hex wouldn't go into it, so I lined the hex wrench up with what I thought were the old flats and lightly tapped it in. It held well enough to get the bolt out. The bolt had no thread lock on it, so that's probably part of the problem and it wasn't that tight to start with. After I got it out, I slipped the arm out a ways and got a good look at the shaft spline. It still looks pretty good. Even with the bolt out, the arm is still grabbing the shaft splines so the arm splines may be in decent shape. My first try is going to be replacing the bolt, tightening it up good and see if it holds.

If it doesn't hold I'm gonna go with the better lever. I was looking around in there with my mirrors and there is a big relief in the back side if the primary, which should be enough room to get the old arm out. It will take some finessing, but it looks like it can be done. When I slid the arm all the way out is was 3/4 of the way off of the shaft.

 

Good news hopefully!

 

Thanks. I certainly hoping for the easy fix first, but we'll see..

 

Let us know what you end up doing. Good luck with it.

 

Well, I got the new bolt in and tightened it to 20FfTLB's and it's nice and tight. There's a little bit of side to side play in the shaft, but that's pretty much normal. I rode about 60 miles that required a lot of up and down shifting and it's still tight. I'll keep an eye on it and if it loosens up again, I think I'll go with the Better Lever.

There's a little trick to get it tightened properly. The clamping bolt is not parellel with the arm. It sits at an angle to the arm and you can't get a hex wrench in straight, so if you try to do the final tightening you'll likely strip out the bolt head, like mine was. I went ahead and ran the bolt down and then put a 2X4 on edge under the front shifter lever. That tilts the arm back just enough the make the bolt almost vertical. Then I did the final tightening. The only reason I didn't want to do that from the start is I didn't want to back load the shift arm on the spline and not get a good seat..

I did this with the shift linkage attached.

 

Great result!