I went to pick up my wife at the YMCA today and parked right up front in the fire lane. I turned the car off to go help her with her bag. When I got in to start the car it wouldn't crank over. I had full power to everything else. I called a flatbed. When he was loading my car he had the ignition on to turn the wheels. I noticed the reverse lights were on. He had to slide the car onto the flatbed because it would not come out of park. We got it to my house and had to slide it off( he squirted dish soap behind the tires). When I turn the ignition on the R on the gear selector lights up. So I'm thinking something is out of sync or a switch is bad not letting it go to park or anything else. Any ideas what I could start looking for? Is this a coomon issue?

Maybe I shouldn't have posted the other day about Jags being so reliable.

 

Got it figured out. With all of the electrical stuff these days, I made a mountain out of a molehill. After tearing out the center console and the shifter housing, I disconnected the cable and manually put the car in park, started it, pushed the cable to drive and ran it up the ramps to check out the underside. It's amazing how clean it was under there. I found a missing bolt(1 of 2) that holds the shift cable bracket on. I stole a coil bracket bolt from my Suburban and bolted the bracket on.

 

If your day job falls through, please give me a call. Nice work!

 

Today I was driving a 04' jaguar xj8 and the same thing happened was stranded in the snow for an hour with the car parked in the middle of a one lane one way street... Talk about bad luck... Had the tow truck come and load it up and it's at the dealership now.. I hope it's just the cable you are talking about and not the transmission since the transmission was replaced 10,000 miles ago with a brand new one! Oh jaguar...