... to the best shift you can Chris and your 1-to-2 shift is still too hard for your liking, then I would recommend a dashpot for ~$5.00 as a way to soften this problem. On the cars delivered in the U.S. they started adding the dashpot on the 1981 models... so I tried them on our two 1980 models and this worked out quite well for us.
Regards,