Bill;
I went back and read your post and looked at the manual for the third time. It finally hit me. I don't think I explained what I want to do well enough. Imagine yourself sitting in the drivers seat and looking down at the steering wheel. Using the steering wheel as a clock face, imagine the shifter lever as the hour hand.
Right now, when I'm in third gear the shifter lever is down at about the 4 oclock position and it hits my knee. What I want to do is move it counter-clockwise to about the 3 oclock position. That would put it around 12 oclock in reverse and second gears. I don't want to pull the lever up closer to the wheel, but swivel it counter-clockwise in relation to the wheel.
Does that make sense? Any other ideas? I saw in the manual that the lever should be horizontal in nuetral. There is some instruction on adjusting the position but its pretty confusing.