REALLY NEED HELP

[DANZIG]

I have a 302v8 with a c4 automatic.
its hard to describe my problem.

well, the gears seem to be way to close together.
this sucks because im constantly having to shift back to drive from second gear. I thought the problem was my steering collum. But i tried putting a floor automatic shifter but still same problem.

P R N D 2 1 < instead of having a little travel between them like this

PRND21 < they are super close, and its super annoying
and dangerous, one night i barely nudged it back to
drive and it hit reverse and scared the living hell
hell outta me! hahaha


i know its not my shifter, is there a way to adjust the travel from inside the tranny???

[FORDification]

Have you looked at your shifter linkage, along the side of the transmission? I'm gonna guess that a previous owner has done some modifications to the shifting arm....that is, they made it shorter than it's supposed to be, so that it has less travel between detents.

Also, if you're barely touching it and it's changing gears, then the detent spring is out of adjustment. It's very easy to correct, though you do have to drop the transmission pan. Here's a couple pictures for reference from the factory shop manual:



That is a shot of the detent lever. You can see how it puts pressure on the shifter linkage, and the lever's detent wheel drops into the valleys of the linkage to hold it in gear. If your spring has weakened, you don't have enough pressure on it to hold it in place. Dropping the pan and removing one bolt that holds this spring in place will allow you to rebend it, giving it more spring action.

Here's where to look for it once you drop the pan.



Like I said, be sure to also check out the linkage along the side of the transmission, to make sure the linkage from the column is hooked up to the end of the shifter arm and not closer to the middle (pivot point).

[DANZIG]

haha i wanna go out and mess with it now, its damn cold out though.

ill check that spring,

and which of these two should my linkage hook up to?
the one on the left right?

[fordman]

left is for the shifter and right is for the kickdown linkage.

[DANZIG]

ok just makin sure of that.
ill get back on here tomorrow and let ya know what i accomplished

[FLATBEDFORD]

haha i wanna go out and mess with it now, its damn cold out though.

How cold could it be in El Paso?

[FORD428CJ]

How cold could it be in El Paso?

I bet it could get down to the 20's or 30's the next day after it was 70 something. I remember being down in San Antonio for basic training years back. And that happen a few times in January time frame LOL

[DANZIG]

weather here is retarded!
one day its freezing, next its all hot.
It actually snowed five or six inches on thanksgiving which was crazy, i remember i was out in my truck in the early morning hours like 3. Damn truck was sliding all over the street!

[fordman]

that is so funny to here someone from a no winter kind of area to talk about trucks sliding around. lik ethere was no reason for the truck to do that.