[jocko]

unless you're completely grossed out by the idea of a column shift lever bump, you can just drive out the pin and remove the shifter lever and call it a day. Not very noticeable. I did that - and I DO plan to eventually remove that little bump, but it's not time critical - i.e. shouldn't hold up your swap, you can get to it when you get to it. What I plan to do is remove the sleeve, cut it off, weld a patch and bwork it. That seems a bit simpler than changing the whole column to me (not to mention the price of a whole new column just to eliminate that little shifter bump).