Last night I got in my recently purchased 1998 S90 to run an errand, and found that the shifter refused to move out of park. This had happened intermittently before, especially when the car was parked on our driveway, which slants slightly. My son came out and we tried rocking the car back and forth, turning it on and off, etc., but had no luck for several minutes. Eventually, applying considerable pressure to the shifter, I did get it out of park, but it was still not working right and would not go back into reverse or park. I drove back into the garage, and while trying to figure out what to do I pulled up on the shift lever and was somewhat surprised when it came right off.

At this point my son, seeing the plastic piece sticking up from the metal shift bar, tweaked it a bit, and it broke right off. Needless to say, this pleased neither of us.

Eventually I did get the shift lever back into park somehow. But now it's stuck there again, with a broken plastic part. I guess it's obvious by now that I need your help and advice. I checked the FAQ and it seems that the microswitch might be a likely culprit, but I also crave any advice you have about fixing that broken plastic piece. Thanks much!

Jeff G.

This is a silly question, but did you put your foot on the brake first?
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Warren Bain - '99 V70GLT G-Valve > 80K mi, 89 300SE, '96 965 >120Kmi, near Manassas Va.. Check the 700/900 FAQ via the 'features' pull down menu. This post written with 100% recycled electrons.

One of the first (expensive) lessons I learned after we bought our 1998 V90 is NEVER NEVER NEVER use force on anything on the interior of the car. I treat it all as if it's made of paper mache.

Also, if you are not already doing this, I highly recommend never placing the car in Park until AFTER the parking brake has been firmly set. Shift to neutral, set parking brake, take foot off brake and let car settle, only then shift into park. When starting off, reverse the process: Shift into neutral or into R or D, and THEN take off the parking brake.

Have you tried to press down the shift knob and shift? Mine has to push down slightly then shift.

We managed to get the shifter functioning again today, thanks mostly to my son's ingenuity--he managed to repair the linkage, at least for now, with a ballpoint-pen spring. I'm thinking now that the problem was right there in the shifter--that the end shifted up somehow just enough that it wasn't pushing the linkage down.

We live and learn. Thanks for your help.

Jeff

Thanks for letting us know what you found. So few ever do.

DEWFPO
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1998 S90 068,300 and 1995 964 152,300

When that happens there's a button on the console called "Shift Lock Overide"
If you had used that button you would have prevented the self-inflicted damage to the shifter and linkage.
Those micro switches go out frequently.
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'89 245 Sportwagon, '96 960 sedan

I did find the override button, and thought surely it would solve the problem, but it made no difference--the shifter still wouldn't budge.

Jeff

We had problems with a balky shifter and it turned out to be the microswitch. But the shift override button should do the trick unless it was damaged in the process.
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97 S90 with 168K miles still going strong