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Well, my car
had this problem for many years. But, it would not happen every time. When
I would take it out for a drive for five miles at the least, and try to park the
car, the shifter lever would not go up past the "Drive" position. But it would
go down into second or first position fine. But not past the drive position. So
I would have to shut the car off in gear, set the parking brake, and leave the
car sit for at least a half hour to cool down and then it would "Pop" into
neutral, reverse, park just fine after that.
I have
had different tranny shops look at it, and they never heard of such a thing.
They all wanted to get into a complete rebuild to try to cure it. But none
of them would guarantee curing that problem. But I knew it couldn't need rebuilt
because there was nothing wrong with the road driveability of it. Just
stopping to park the car.
Like I
said, I had this problem with the car many years, I had to learn where and where
not to park because if I were to park in a spot that I would have to back up, I
couldn't in case the shifter would decide to stick. Also, I had to run a
jumper wire at the starter relay bypassing the neutral safety switch, so I could
restart the car in gear after a quick gas up.{NO ONE else drove the car but
me!}
I
know it sounds like a lot of monkey business, but being the stubborn mechanic
that I am, there had to be something simple causing the trouble. I had even
called around for another trans, but decided that wasn't going to be an option
for me. One time, I thought that I had it diagnosed to be in the valve body
after immediately taking down the trans pan one time while it was stuck in gear.
The cable in the trans was loose, and the manual lever on the valve body was
tight.But trying ''3'' valve bodies later, the problem was still there. I
even tried bypassing the trans cooler lines from the radiator thinking that
pressure maybe building up in the valve body and not letting the manual valve
release until it would sit for a while and bleed the pressure down. I had
done all of this and more over the course of about 10 years!! So, finally I
had asked for help on the Imperial Mailing List, and Glen Johnson had the answer
that I had needed. He had the same trouble with his car, and he had the neutral
switch and the shift cable both replaced. WOW- so obvious! Well, I tried the new
switch first because I knew that my cable was working freely. And YES, I
could drive my Imperial like a normal car again!
After
looking back, it should have been obvious to maybe replace that neutral switch.
It must have been getting hot and it would stick keeping the valve body lever
from going past the drive detent. And since it is the cable shift type, the
cable would not ''push'' the valve lever past the ''drive'' detent.It would just
kink. Now I have been driving the car for 16 months since replacing the switch
with no problems. It is great that we can share info with each other about
diffrent experiences.
So, if
anyone has a cable shift, lever or push button type that seems tight or kind of
rough, it may be worth replacing that switch before doing alot of other work or
expense.
Rob Kidd 61/65
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