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.