Before I get into a story, one thing to check on the transmission before weather gets bad is the shifter cable where it attachs to the transmission housing. Its under the drivers side and there are 2 bolts that attach it. if they are loose, and your on the road, it would result in a major headache.


Story...

So, while at work I recieve a call from my father asking me if the car has ever gotten stuck in reverse while pulling in or out of a parking space.At first I'm thinking what car because I traded in my 2008 civic coupe for a 2010 civic sedan. Then I realized and am now thinking the worst.

I told him to go ahead and open up the shifter assembly. That required removal of the armrest, center storage, ashtray, center console, nav unit, rear heat tube... in short, alot of stuff.

Once removed, the whole shift assembly was revealed. checked out everything and everything checked okay EXCEPT the actual cable that goes to the transmission, it had alot of play. A tug to that cable put the transmission back into 'park' and we were able to restart the car.

At first we thought we needed to adjust it since there are adjustment screws. Tried that with no success, it actually made it worse. we could not get it further then neutral from drive now.

We came to the conclusion the problem was with the cable down under the chasis, so out came the jack and jackstands and flashlight. Immediately my father found the problem, the bracket that attachs to the transmission body has 2 bolts. 1 was MISSING and the other was loose.

I quickly went across the street where the car was originally parked to see if the bolt was anywhere on the ground and wouldnt you know it. it WAS.

So we reattached it and all was well, my heartrate came back down to 90 now.

Then we reassembled the whole interior and I told my father, " all of this headache over 1 damn bolt". with that said I realized that if this had happened on the road it would have cost all but $1000 just to get the car towed (highway tolls start at $500 and are $1 a mile thereafter). Then with no tools or know how anytransmission shop would say "the whole transmission needs to get changed" or the jaguar dealer would have charged a few hours of labor to try and trouble shoot the problem.



So with all of that said, next time you are changing your motor oil or getting it changed. save yourself much stress and have those 2 bolts checked out to make sure they are nice and tight, its real easy and not worth ignoring.

In case this comes up, Ive never tampered with that before so im assuming road bumps loosened it over the years.


-Victor

 

Thanks for the tip Victor! I assume you added a little loctite on yours this time?

 

Np, no n locktight. i just torqued the crap out of it. plus i sprayed the assembly with some wd-40 to preven corrosion.

let m tell you, this had me nrvous as hell untill w fgured it was something so simple.

 

Thanks for the info!! My 04 got stuck in nuetral last night and I had half the center console apart when I remembered this post. I decided to look at the shift cable off the trans and found one of the screws was laying on the ground and the other one was loose! Truthfully, I got luck. I just got back from a wedding 60 miles away and the screw decided to fall out then I stopped at a birthday party in my neighborhood.

 

Yeaa exactly. Its a luck thing cause that can happen anywhere.

At least I now know this help one fellow Jag owner !