Stuck in park!?

[mowglie]

car constipation! i guess better the car than the owner? (see slight typo in quoted post.)

ok serious hat on: 99 tahoe LT v8 5.7L. a plastic pin came loose & fell out god knows where, so the shift latch (right name?) isnt attached to the shift cable or some part of shifting mechanism. its easy temp fix, just crawl in there & reattach it. so it sounds like candyman's issue?

do i have to buy an entire cable & replace it? cant i just buy the missing pin or somehow connect the latch so it doesnt come lose randomly w/o negatively effecting the rest of the car (cable, tranny, etc)?

thanx.

ps pls correct my terminology; i want to learn the proper component names.

I had a similar problem recently. Mine turned out to be the shift cable. One of the tabs that lock the cable in place on the trans. Dried & broke so it wouldn't shift right. It's under the driver side of the truck in a bracket coming off the side if the trans. The cable cost me $100. Changed it out myself. Make sure you don't bend that bracket out of place. If you do it won't shit.

 

[Sceebo]

Very old thread but helped me. My brake lights worked but I couldn't shift from park after starting engine. I could shift from park when the key was in the first position where the shift indicator lights up but not the other lights on the dash. From that surmised to be the brake switch. Bought one at the parts store for 21 bucks, swapped it out, problem solved. Shifting normally.

 

[rchurch5945]

You should also check the transmission mount or a bad engine mount. Sometimes when any of them go bad it will allow the transmission to move slightly and put the linkage in a bind and it won't work.