Hi Greg,

I thought I'd share something I learned the hard way. I learned not to put off fixing the bushings in the automatic transmission selector linkage. Like so many of these lessons, I learned mine under the car at my daughter's school on a rainy Sunday in January.

She told me the shifter was sloppy, and when she called to say it wouldn't go past neutral to reverse or park, I came prepared to deal with that solenoid lockout and the shifter mechanism in her '91. Sure enough, I couldn't move it past D much less into neutral. Ran into a brick wall. Or rather, after looking under the car, it ran into an asphalt pavement.

The slop in the bushing-less linkage put stress on the rivet joint at the adjuster in the linkage arm and finally broke it, so the arm separated and hung down to the ground.

The first picture below shows what you should take under the car with you when you replace those bushings. The second photo shows what happened to my kid's linkage from the neglect. After that are pictures of the shifter end assembly and the transmission selector end respectively, the way my cleaned-up junker replacement looked.

If you go to the bottom of this page http://cleanflametrap.com you'll find a link to some pics of a backup/neutral switch repair that might help.