How do I unhook or detach the parking lock control rod from the valve body (or the other end) with the 727 trans still in my '68 road runner?


I went to take my little boy to a local cruise last night and the 727 would only go into reverse and felt like the linkage was binding up but when I detached the shift linkage from the trans I found it was the trans that was the problem. I pulled the trans pan and removed the mechanical external shift and kick-down levers, removed the filter and the 10 valve body bolts and now the only thing holding it in is the parking lock control rod as it's called in the manual. It's late and before I screw something up I thought I'd ask.....not like me I usually screw something up then ask I must really be tired

Thanks as always for any help,


MikeR

turn the driveshaft or yoke and the rod should release...

The rod is held in the valve body by an E clip , pop off the clip and then it will be easier to get the rod out , but as said turn the driveshaft till you get it to come out.

Of course it's 7 hrs after you asked , what are you doing in the garage at 1AM ?

Not having any luck with turning the back wheels/yoke and getting the rod to release; is there a bolt or set screw I need to remove?

Is there just one position on the turning of the yoke that I need it to be in or do I constantly turn it to slip the rod out?

Tough to see the "E" clip on the valve body end because I can't lower the valve body enough with the rod attached to get to it for some reason.


MikeR

Just pull the thing out. There is nothing holding the rod in the trans. Turning the yoke slightly will move it enough so the parking lever will clear the teeth on the shaft. You should be able to swivel the valvebody to give you more room.

Just pull out and twist at the same time.
Take the pressure off the park/driveline, remember to block the wheels!

Got the valve body out, and it works fine without the parking lock control rod attached but I didn't find that out until I put the vb back in. I took the "E" clip off and pulled the valve body out, cleaned everything I could, worked the lever and it worked fine, reinstalled the plc rod and reassembled it and once again only reverse. This time I was just going to try and pull the vb out with the plc rod still attached and it will not come out. So off with the "E" clip and the rod will not come out even by itself. There is something that is spring loaded that is blocking the hole the rod is in and I can't move it out of the way to get it out.

The parking lock control rod I'm pretty sure is my problem and doesn't seem to be attached at the other end away from the valve body. Now how do I fix that............please don't tell me I have to pull the trans to do that


Here in the lower left is what I think I'm dealing with.

The spring loaded piece is the park lever. The rod has a cone shaped end on it that lifts the lever when pulled. That end of the rod is not attached to anything. When pushed it allows the lever to drop down and engage the teeth on the output shaft causing it to be locked in palce known as park position. When you pull the rod the lever will raise up. The reason for turning the yoke a little is to take any pressure off the lever. Try pushing the rod in a little bit and then pull harder. There is nothing attached to the other end oif the rod and there should be no reason for it not to pull out.

exactly, Why? Did You want to pull the valve body?
Your shifting problem, seems like it would be the external linkage to me.
That parking rod, stays in that hole, even when the transmission is in the other gears. At least if I remember correctly....
Not too much goes wrong with the valve body shift detents. They only work when they are installed correctly, and didnt You drive the car to where You are now? So what happened between then and now? I would have someone moving the shifter, while looking for problems underneath, with binding and such. After You get it all back together.

The end of the park rod slips past a tapered ramp in the tailhousing, the ramp is held in place by a long-eared snap ring. In some rare cases the clocking of the snap ring allows the park rod to become jammed under the park sprag instead of sliding along side it.

In the pic below note how the snap ring isn't clocked all the way clockwise, if the snap ring is clocked full counterclockwise the park rod can become positioned between the bottom ear of the snap ring and the sprag where it becomes jammed.

Would the park rod end ALWAYS, be in that hole, or does it rest on the spring loaded "gate" when the car is in say, drive or reverse?
Just wondering, because of my previous post...
Didnt want to give any wrong info.

Here's how it went down and did I over react?:

My son and I go to a local hometown Advance Auto Friday evening cruise whenever we get a chance that starts around 4:30 and runs to 7:30-ish. So I'm running late from getting home from work and it's about 5:45 and I start the road runner to get it out of the garage to let it warm-up in the driveway. I start the car and immediately put it into reverse and it dies in a second or two, realizing I gave it no chance to run. I go to pull it into neutral instead of park to restart it and it won’t go into neutral no matter how hard I pull. So I put it back into park and restart the engine and wait a minute this time and start to back out of the garage when I stop after only one foot of backing up and out of curiosity I try to put it into drive and it won’t even go into neutral. I back up a few inches at a time and keep trying to get it to go into drive but nothing and I’ve backed up enough that I’m about at the point that there will be no way for me to push the rr back into the garage if I don’t stop right then and there.

I didn’t want to have the car halfway down the driveway if I had to pull the linkage or work under the car in the gravel. So I push it back in and tell my son it’s a no go and proceed to get the jack and jack stands to remove the linkage to see why it’s binding? I removed the shift linkage and that was not the problem as it moved with little or no effort at all. Then I tried to move the lever on the trans and you know most of what I found from what was posted above.

Fast forward to removing the valve body to see why it is not working and I pull the valve body forward to get to the “E”-clip and later realize that getting to the E-clip is only possible if the indexing plate is turning to the different shift positions. Take the E-clip off and inspect the valve body and notice a spring that I think is not correct, fix that, reassemble the valve body with the parking lock rod reattached and you guessed it, it doesn’t shift beyond reverse again with or without the shift linkage attached.

I then know I have to get the parking lock control rod out to see is I can figure out what is going wrong now. I got it out, attached it to the valve body and carefully inserted it into the trans and bolted the vavle body back in place, attached the shift linkage and viola IT WORKS like it used to.

Did I have a problem or did I have a parking lock system that was just stuck in the trans and if I would have backed up another few feet it would have worked??? In the few feet that I had reverse I could not get the trans to go into anything beyond that or park.

I drove it the night before about 60 miles and when I put it into the garage I have a small block on the floor as a wheel stop and may have put it into park with just a little tension. Every time hen I would put it into reverse it made a loud clunking sound that it never had before and doesn’t now???? I put about 4-5 miles on it yesterday testing it and tonight I’m planning on the same 60 mile ride like I did the night before I had the “nothing but park and reverse” issue?

Did anyone here ever have this problem? Do you think the parking lock pawl was kind of stuck and blocking it from shifting into neutral and the forward gears?


Thanks for everyone’s help on this and “live and learn”, now at least I know how to remove the valve body and Parking Lock Control Rod…….but really didn’t want to have to know that, just wanted to go to the local Friday night cruise with my kid.

I thought I had it fixed after I finally got the parking lock control rod out and re-installed and it worked for the few miles of testing around home and down to the park ( ) so I decided to take it over to my friend's house to finish off some under hood details last night. Everything worked just fine on the long drive over there and then about 10 o'clock we finish and I get in the car put it into reverse and there's the "clunk" sound again so I try to put it into neutral and drive and it's bound up again and won't go into anything but reverse. The park position doesn't work (except that you can start the engine with the shift pointer in "P") and you have to put the parking brake on to keep the car from rolling now.

I thought maybe I just need to drive a little in reverse to unstick the park lock pawl or mechanism so up the street to the cul-de-sac for about a 1/4 mile round trip in reverse it goes Even tried to throw it into park during the trip up the street but that didn't do anything but shut off the reverse lights in the dark (they are not that bright to begin with).

Don't know what's causing this or how it got this way because there was no abuse or abnormal driving that I did with the car the night before it first did this and the same thing last night; just drove the car, stopped, put it into PARK and now it's like the park lock control rod is jammed against something solid and won't move????

I'm sure I have to pull the trans to get to the park lock area to see what it might be this time.....arrrrgh!



MikeR

Mike you don't have to pull the trans , just pull the tailshaft , I'm thinking something is in there like a piece of a snap pring or something else ...

If the rod wouldn't come out of the tail you might have the same problem removing the tail from the rod.

Before attempting to remove the tail, place the shifter in "1" to extend the rod as far into the tail as it will go.