Charlie- The sloppiness could be caused by worn forks, but most likely it's all in the shifter tower itself. If you look at the top of the trans. where the shifter goes in, there's a tower bolted on that has a ball socket machined into the bottom of it much like the u-joint housing on the back of your transmission. The shifter has a ball on it that pivots inside this socket. The shifter ball has a dowel pin pressed through it that rides in a slot in the socket. This pin lets it pivot, but not rotate around. Typically, the slot and pin wear a ton, then you end up moving the shifter a ton before it actually moves the forks. Without removing the tranny, you could remove the shifter and it's tower as an assembly (by unbolting the 4 bolts that hold the whole top cover on) and remachine or replace the worn parts. It will then be way tighter and you might not even consider a rebuild necessary.
