The shift lever on my 95 5.0l Automatic is loose.

It moves freely through (P) park to (N) neutral, and will not engage or move into (D) drive. It seems as though the problem is in the steering column. I crawled underneath to see if the linkage to the tranny was fubar in anyway. It looked normal to me.

I was going to remove the plastic cover to the column and see whats up but I wanted yo see what you guys thought first.

 

T30 screwdriver for the two bolts



Things that will add to the sloppiness beyond those screws. I'll try to put this in point form.

-The outter tube rotates on 2 plastic bushings, those bushings can wear out which will allow the outter tube to bounce around in. (common)

FIX: Disassemble and replace bushings

-Each bushing on the outter tube has a clamp, each with 2 screws that can loosen. (rare)

FIX: Drop column and tighten clamp screws

-The 2 screws like you tightened can back out, I put a little bit of blue locktite on the threads on shift tube replacements. (somewhat common)

FIX: Can be tightened with out dropping column

-The pin on the outter shift tube that the shifter handle pivots on wears out and allows there to be slop in the handle to ouuter shift tube.(very common)

FIX: Disassemble and replace worn parts, 90% of the time you need shift handle pin and outter shift column. The other 10% of the time you need the 1st 2 parts and the shift handle.





Stolen from another forum!

 

This shaft is broken right. How in the heck. anyone ever seen this?
Off to the junk yard and find this piece.
Any thoughts (constructive ) always appreciated.
sorry pictures coming.
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A not broken one. That whole shift lever comes off pretty easy. Gotta wonder how someone could snap yours like that. That one I haven't seen before.

 

I haven't completely removed the broken unit yet but I have gotten a junk yard piece from a 92 E250van. Looks the same but I will compare once I remove the old unit.

The junk yard piece came with the shift lever It has the overdrive button at the end, but no wiring. I will want to swap the shift levers out so that I can use my original shift lever as it still has the correct wiring for the overdrive button.
The question is:
How does the pin that holds the shift lever in place come out?

 

about 4:45 on shows him swapping out the lever assembly, before that it's just him talking and tearing the column apart.

This is on a 99 but ford continued using basically the same setup. E series and F series used most of the same parts, very few things that can't be swapped.

 

You'll find that same column in a taurus or sable - that's how common they are.

 

Gotta hand it to ford, though, saving money like that is a big reason they didn't need a bailout with the other companies a few years ago.

 

Everything went back together as planned. Works great again.
I wish I knew the tilt wheel lever unscrewed before I damaged the trim piece under the steering wheel.

 

You shouldn't have a problem finding a good one of those in a junk yard.