Hello all,
I'm hoping someone can chime in with some advice. I've been working on fixing my truck up - sandblasted/painted frame, 'new' cab, etc. When parked, the trans worked just fine (351W 4bbl with a C6 trans 4wd), but now all gears go in reverse. It's sure an odd one. Even when the trans is in park it seems like it wants to fight to drive in reverse, but the parking prawls are holding it from doing so. Other than that, R, N, D, 2 and 1 all = reverse.

Now that the truck is almost 100% back together, I'm guessing I'll have to pull the trans for a rebuild huh?

Thanks for any input!
Chris

 

does the shifter feel solid, or is it a bit sloppy?
if its sloppy, the indicator may be showing all the different gears, but actually only selecting reverse, which is the closest to park.

they come loose under the dash, where the arm bolts to the cable. (if that is a cable, im not sure)

or it could be fluid bypassing internally. and should be pulled and checked.

but check the shifter, and cable(if it has one) first.

 

yeah I've checked the shifter, and it's moving the selector on the transmission. It just boggles me because when I fired the engine up again after getting the new cab on and wired up, I jacked the rear end up and shifted it into gear and it went into a forward gear and was running 15-20 mph. But now last night all I get is reverse in every gear?!

I had put in fresh oil/filter on it before I had fired it up the first time, and after last nights fiasco with about 10 minutes of run time on it, the oil smells a bit burnt.

Is there any adjustments I could check or anything I can do w/o having to pull it? I'm not looking forward to rebuilding/replacing the transmission as I've already dropped 700.00 in parts on this thing in the last month already, and now when it's nearly set to go the trans craps out. I'm starting to regret fixing the truck up instead of my civic!

And as far as transmission rebuilds, does it require any special tools? I know the C6's are supposed to be easy transmissions to do.

 

The virtually bomb-proof C6 roared back to life tonight. So for those perhaps curious or for future search/answer sake, here's the 'fix'.

Since the trans had worked the night or two before, I figured it was something in the valve body that went out, like a o-ring or something on the reverse circuit. So I proceeded with drilling a hole in the bottom of the oil pan (yeah I know it sounds ghetto, but I've had it with some engineer thinking "we don't need a drain plug" or "we can save .005 cents per car if we don't include a drain plug" on the transmission pans, so after cleaning the pan up I proceeded to tig weld in a drain plug ). Now with that CLEANLY out of the way (it pisses me off having to clean oil off the shop floor if you haven't noticed by now lol) it took about 2 seconds to find the problem - somehow the shift lever post inside the transmission came out of the manual valve slot, leaving the hydraulics forever in a reverse selected position. I can't for the life of me figure out how this came out as it took undoing the neutral/backup safety switch and linkage, swinging the shift selector all the way forward as far as it would go, pushing the manual valve in the valve body all the way forward, and still having to (quite) forcefully pull the shift selector to get it to fall back in place. I few swings from park to first and back showed no signs of it popping out again, so on went the pan and in went the oil. After changing every fluid on that truck, and the transmission twice I feel like I've kept a small refinery in business for the month.

Diagnosis: This one goes in the book as a "wtf?" It's nearing x-mas so it must be them elves...

So it's again a happy purring C6 trans (albeit with a slightly shortened life span after trying to go forward and reverse at the same time). I'll probably give it a full rebuild this coming summer when I fix up the body. For now I just want a dependable winter/plow truck. We'll just look on the bright side and say it has "freshly resurfaced clutch packs"

 

It may not be the transmission.

Look under the hood at the bottom of the steering column. There will be a gearshift selector lever there that the shift rod hooks to, In that lever is a snap in plastic bushing, if it's worn, that could be the problem. There is the same type of bushing on the manual control lever on the transmission. Worn or missing bushings will cause slop in the gearshift lever.


The gearshift lever has a short flange on it that fits into a shift detent (shift gate). The half moon shaped detent is screwed to the steering column flange. The detent tends to wear down, or break apart from ppl yanking the shift lever out of park. That leads to the lever dropping into reverse from park. Crummy example of what the detent looks like = \ P I R I D I 2 I 1 / Between those I's is where the shift lever's flange fits, and are what wear or break off.

E0BZ-7341-B .. Shift Lever Bushing - Still available from Ford

E0DZ-7A216-A .. Shift Detent ~ Use with tilt wheel ~ Still available from Ford

E0DZ-7A216-C .. Shift Detent ~ Use with fixed wheel ~ Obsolete

FTE sponsor GREEN SALESalso has E0DZ-7A216-A. Their price might be less than Ford's, which is over a hunded bucks. GreenSales: 800-543-4959

 

The shift bushings/linkages are fine, they were the first thing I checked. The problem was the shift selector came undone from the valve body inside the transmission. The detents all work just fine as well on the trans with a definite click to each gear. I've just never seen the selector separate from the valve body on an automatic transmission before. I've seen manual transmissions pop from the shift rails, but never an automatic and it took undoing the neutral/backup switch before it had enough travel in the selector lever to even get close to put back in place with the valve body.

It's a weird one I'd say.