Simon928

My transmission shifter cable is getting kinky, and not in a sexy way. I disconnected the cable from the lever on the transmission to change the length of it because the shifter arrow and the gears were not lining up. I put both the gear selector in the cabin and the lever on the transmission in neutral, made sure the cable had no slack, and re-attached it with the clip to the lever on the transmission. It shifts fine from N down to 2, but when I shift into R and P, instead of the cable pushing the lever backward into gear, the cable bends and it stays in Neutral. There appears to be a kink in the cable right below the metal sheath that surrounds the cable. Does anyone have any ideas about how I can straighten this out without removing the whole thing?

1984 US Auto

Simon928

Here's a pic of what I'm talking about. Sorry about the quality.

Mrmerlin

time for new parts, there are routing collars for the cable,
maybe one of them has been removed and thus the cable is operation an an unusual angle

Bill Ball

Two parts of that cable housing screw together rigidly on a bracket. The far end is a rigid rod sliding in the tube so the cable cannot flex as it pushes back againt the selector lever, as shown in this drawing. Like Stan said, you appear to be missing that bracket, and maybe the cable housing is broken.

dr bob

The sleeve that threads over the rod has broken. It is the common faillure mode per Greg Brown. I broke the cable at the front under the lever, but the sleeves survived. Bought a used cable to get by until the new one arrived from Germany via 928 Intl. I'm not at home to look for the pieces. ;( But used and new are available from them.

Simon928

Thanks for the info everyone. It didn't occur to me that I was missing a piece because it was working fine before I took it apart. I actually had a full shift cable from an '87 lying around, so I took the sleeve that I was missing off of it and put it on mine. The thing is though, it doesn't seem to fit properly. I can now go from P to D, but I can't manually shift into 3 or 2, as the rod/sleeve doesn't give me enough space to shift pass D. If I shorten the bar, I get the same problem I was having before. It's not that big of a deal as I almost never manually shift the gears, but I was just curious as to whether there were differences in the model years and maybe I should order the correct part or if maybe I did something wrong.