So a year ago I replaced my battery and never could figure out why it wouldn't crank afterward. I ended up disengaging the shift lock and pushed it back into the garage. Well tonight I recharged the battery, deactivated the alarm(the whole reason it wouldn't crank last year), gave it a little gas and horray! She lives again! Now I put it in reverse, backed it out of the garage and tried to shift it to drive. It wouldn't get past neutral! No matter how hard I pulled it wouldn't budge. I even tried a screwdriver in the shift lock, but had no luck. So what do I do now?

 

Firstly, you appear NEW, so welcome aboard. It might pay to go to the the "new member intro" area, and do your thing. It keeps things as designed, and the Moderators all warm and fuzzy.

First suggestion on the issue.

Either the connector inside the trans that slides the selector shaft to do its thing as the outside lever moves in sequence with the lever inside the car, has jammed, which is not common.

Firstly, disconnect the cable under the car (LH side of the trans case), and see if the lever down there will actually manually move thru the travel as designed. This will eliminate the transmission as the culprit.

If this proves OK, then the cable itself, or the lever and its associated bits inside the car have gone haywire. Remove the ski slope and see what is going on as you try and move that lever around. It may be the "linear" switch on the RH side of the J gate that has fallen apart and jammed, but being plastic, basically, your attempts to "pull the lever HARD" would have ripped that thing apart in my opinion.

Systematically trying things and carefully watching what happens, is going to be the only way I reckon.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. After dismantleing the shifter, I found I had broken the plastic dust cover disk. I removed it and this fixed the shifting problem. Any recommendations on a replacement?

 

Many suggestions, some not printable here, haha.

Good to hear you fixed it.

Here are the printable ones.

Try a wrecker, I hear there are plenty up your way, and I reckon the XJ40 will be the same bit you seek.

Repair what you broke. I use a "Made in USA" product called "Rapid Fix", and it has saved my bacon many times.

Leave it out, looks crap, but at least the car is useable.

 

Grant, you amaze me. Here I am in the states and don't know about rapid Fix. Gorilla glue, yes, But that expands quite a bit and can be unsightly. I will check it out.