My 16v gearbox also feels notchy and is not as smooth as the BMW's I used to drive. Also it has a very long throw, well compared to a friends e36 328i with short shifter. I've read that changing the bushings to custom made ones improves the shifting but haven't tried it out. It'll be very good if we could modify the shift to something like a short shift . In my opinion the way that MB designed the gear changing mechanism with the three external rods is not very good.
P.S. did some searching, here is a good post on a short shift from
matsalleh76 on the
http://190rev.net :
http://190rev.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20646#post229949