Play in Shifter

[chrisbmx]

I have a 99 5 speed. Has been a great car. Just noticed some forward and backward play in the shifter, about an inch or two, while it is in gear. It seemed like it was worse than I ever noticed before, soo.....I pulled the cover right under the shifter to see what's going on. Everything looked tight there. Then I put it up on jackstands and got underneath. I had my wife move the shifter back and forth to see what I could see. behind the drivers front wheel where the shifter cable attaches to a "transmission lever?", I noticed some play. There is a plastic piece that goes onto the metal "transmission lever". Inside this plastic piece is a rubber grommet. The grommet is worn out pretty bad.
I can slide the plastic piece off the transmission lever pretty easily if I had a grommet to replace the bad one with.
Where can I get this grommet? Do I have to purchase the whole cable, cause it looks like a pain to change the whole thing?

[skater]

You may be able to get the grommet from Ford - it depends on the build date of the car (I don't remember what it was). The other options are to (a) replace the cables entirely, which I did, or (b) work up something at the hardware store.

[chrisbmx]

If anyone runs into this problem.......I bought a part# F7RZ-7412-AA Collet from the ford garage parts dept, about $13. I took the grommet out of it and put it into mine where the old one was. It was hard to put in, but worked better once I realized to use the curved side to to my advantage and push it into the open area where the old grommet was. Total time, about 1/2 hour. My car was built in January 1999, so the part might be different for your car, cause the guy at the counter said it was good that it was built on that date (I guess if it was a later build, it was a different part, or I would have had to get the whole cable, or ???).
Anyway, for whoever's info if they run into the same problem.