UUC SSK 'swoosh' noise. Hope its not broke...

Check down a couple days' posts, and you'll find my writeup on my UUC SSK install. Now that I've had it for a couple of days, I gotta say I'm getting used to the bit of extra effort, and I'm starting to like it.

Anyhow, a couple of noises have developed, and I'm wondering if they're normal or what. Searching on Fanatics doesn't show anyone having a noise problem, so I dunno.

From pretty much the beginning, there would be a faint whooshing noise when the shifter was about the engage 2nd or 3rd, and I didn't think too much of it. On my way home from work just now, that whooshing got a lot louder and of a longer duration than before, accompanied with a clinking when the shifter ends its travel into 2nd or 4th.

I'm gonna do some more investigating later, but I'm suspecting that the insulating material between the shaft of the shifter and the top piece (that the knob attaches to) has shifted around somehow and when force is applied, there is metal-to-metal contact, doing 2 things: transmitting noise and vibration from the bottom of the car into the knob mount (whoosh), and allowing a sharp metal-on-metal contact when its pulled all the way back (clink). I'm not rough on the shifter by any means, but I don't think this is normal. UUC doesn't do tech support via e-mail so I'll call em in the AM as well.

I just hope its not something underneath.