Just wanted to drop a little experience I had for anyone else with a low budget - I went to my car the other morning, started it, and tried to shift down to drive to take off. The shifter went down to neutral and stayed there. No matter where I moved the knob, the indicator light was stuck on neutral; a little bit of rocking back and forth confirmed that it was indeed in neutral. Some googling pointed to the shift cable. After I did a little investigating under the hood, I saw that the cable was no longer attached to the transmission. I should have taken pics right then and there but I was in a hurry.
I'll explain as best i can and upload pictures. From the pictures, #1 (the little orange bushing inside the little plastic arm) is often the culprit when this particular thing happens. It's made from plastic (go figure) and very susceptible to failure. If you go to the dealer ( and I think any parts store for that matter), they only sell the entire cable(40-50$) or will charge you around $400 to replace it for you. I found several other "Universal" shift cable bushings at parts stores but none the right size. I went to the local junkyard and pulled off two of these guys(which they charged me $2.83 for) off of crashed gen 7 Malibus with the same trim. You can do this by releasing the clip (#2) and separating the entire "arm" piece from the cable. Replace the arm, seat back over the end of the shift cable ( the little round metal ball ), and replace the clip (#2). Prior to doing this, if your car is stuck in neutral or another gear besides park, you can manually shift your car into park using the arm on top of the transmission, or alternatively set your parking brake. If you have any questions reach out. I searched a little but didn't find a recent thread covering this, so I thought I would for anyone else who runs into this problem. Good luck!
P.S. Second pic shows the "arms", one with a bushing in it, and the old one out of my car that failed (no bushing).
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I'll explain as best i can and upload pictures. From the pictures, #1 (the little orange bushing inside the little plastic arm) is often the culprit when this particular thing happens. It's made from plastic (go figure) and very susceptible to failure. If you go to the dealer ( and I think any parts store for that matter), they only sell the entire cable(40-50$) or will charge you around $400 to replace it for you. I found several other "Universal" shift cable bushings at parts stores but none the right size. I went to the local junkyard and pulled off two of these guys(which they charged me $2.83 for) off of crashed gen 7 Malibus with the same trim. You can do this by releasing the clip (#2) and separating the entire "arm" piece from the cable. Replace the arm, seat back over the end of the shift cable ( the little round metal ball ), and replace the clip (#2). Prior to doing this, if your car is stuck in neutral or another gear besides park, you can manually shift your car into park using the arm on top of the transmission, or alternatively set your parking brake. If you have any questions reach out. I searched a little but didn't find a recent thread covering this, so I thought I would for anyone else who runs into this problem. Good luck!
P.S. Second pic shows the "arms", one with a bushing in it, and the old one out of my car that failed (no bushing).
