has anybody ever thought about changing the skip shift light into a shift light. My only worries about pulling off this operation is that the light may not be bright enough

 

yeah, the point of a shift light is to be big enough or bright enough so you don't have to divert your attention from the road/track to know when to shift consistently.

i highly doubt the skip shift light would work. unless you could cut out the area around the actual words...to make a larger circle or something.

 

Try putting it in the defog vent for the side windows that is in the a pillar. It works great.