shifter stopped shifting something inside colum is wore out or broke ? it try to catch every once in a while and shift but then is hard to get it to catch again to get it to go back in to park . then u have to pop hood and pull shift rod to park manually . does anyone know what is going on. thanks matt

 

Welcome to FTE

First things to inspect.

Look at the bottom of the steering column underneath the hood...there you will find the manual control selector lever. The shift rod attaches there.

In that lever is a snap on plastic bushing. When it wears out, or breaks, the shift lever won't properly engage Park, or other gears. The bushing is still available from Ford.

On the manual control lever on the transmission is another like bushing, the same thing can happen here.

Next..

Inside the column, bolted to the lower portion of the upper flange is a shift gate. A small tit on the shift lever fits in there. Ppl over the years yank the lever out of park, that causes the detents on the shift gate to wear or snap off. When the detents are broken, engaging park is difficult at best.


Shift gate: \ P l R l N l D1 l D2 l L / The bottom of the shift gate is half moon shaped.