I am looking to buy a B&M short shifter for my 96 GTS. I looked at pictures from a few stores at Ebay and marketplace on this site, I saw some of the shifters have stops(adjustable screw stops on the front and back) and some don't. Does this mean that they change the design? Can someone please chime in? Which one should I get, with stop or without stop?
The B&M used to have adjustable positive stops, but they discontinued that feature a couple of years ago, apparently because a few people didn't adjust them properly and had problems. As you noted, several companies haven't updated their website to show pics of the new "stopless" design; I bought one based on the picture and description on the website (Summit I think) and was not happy when it showed up without stops. So I took mine by a local machine shop and had them drill and tap a couple of horizontally opposed screw holes in the shifter base (5/16" as I recall), picked up a couple of hex head 5/16 bolts at Autozone, and for about $12 extra I recreated the "old" B&M shifter with positive stops. If you go that route you'll need to get the right length bolts, because you need bolts that are long enough to screw back out to the area you need the bolt heads to serve as stops, but not so long you can't fit them in the inside of the shifter base to screw them in (particularly the second one, which has to fit between the head of the first bolt screwed all the way in and the hole on the opposite side of the shifter base). Not rocket science by any means though, nor is adjusting the stops. Yet another example of a company changing their product in an effort to make it idiot proof.
As far as which one to get, I'm no tranny expert, but the guy at G-Force who built my tranny told me to make sure and get one with positive stops, so I did. The reason the stops are there is to prevent shift fork damage from overtravel if you shift hard, so if you drag race or like to bang the gears fast I'd go with one with stops.