The shifting lever is stuck in the park position of my 99 Expedition, but I believe the transmission is still in drive, so the car will not start and it drifts unless the emergency brake is on. We drove somewhere, then the lever moved very easily and did not click when I moved the lever into park. The lever seemed loose like nothing was connected. Now it won't start and the lever won't move out of park. I assume it must now be towed to a garage for repairs. Any ideas ?

 

Update.....got the Expedition home now.....had to violently turn the steering wheel back and forth to get the shift lever out of park, then had to crawl underneath the vehicle and manually shift into park, then start the vehicle, then crawl back underneath and manually shift into drive. Got it home, but now I need to fix it. The cable must be loose or broken somewhere running up to the shift lever. The shift lever basicaly is doing nothing. Not looking forward to doing this.

 

Update - we removed the shift cable. It was much easier than expected. I called the autoparts store to see if they have a new one, but I was told it is a dealer item. I will get one tomorrow. Found the problem. The plastic sleeve of the shift cable was broken near the end at the steering column. The metal cable is shiny and new and not broken, just the short plastic sleeve the cable runs through. Here's the other issue......there was black electrical tape wrapped around the broken plastic piece attempting to hold it together. Aparently it worked OK until the other day when it fell apart. My Expedition has always been taken to the same dealer for service, and 3 months ago the dealer had the Expedition for 2 days so they could take apart the entire dashboard to replace the heater box. I am seriously wondering if they broke this part and attempted to cover up their mistake by taping it back together with electrical tape. I can not think of any other reasonable explanation. If this is true it makes me upset and I will lose confidence in my dealer. When I go there tomorrow I am taking the broken part to show them. I don't suppose they will agree with my guess as to what happened and give me a free replacement part. What do you people think of that ?

 

The dealer did NOTHING, so I ended up paying for the part and installing it myself. The vehicle works good again. The repair was quick and relatively easy. I can hardly imagine what they would have charged for labor, probably an hour or two, and it only took 20 minutes from start to finish including adjusting it correctly. Amazing. Well.....now I won't go back to them again, so they are basically losing thousands of dollars of future repair work for both of my Ford vehicles. Also, I was considering buying a new Focus for my travels to work, but now I won't be buying it there. Very foolish on their part indeed.