Gears

[Iceman10129]

So all of a sudden, when driving to go drop soemthing off. I put my car in park and it started goign in reverse...well basiaclly this is what they all do:

(P)ark=Reverse
(R)everse=reverse
(N)uetral=is
(D)-(1)=are fine

Does anyone have any ideas of what could be wrong?

[TraceZ]

I'd start by jacking up the car, disconnecting the shift linkage and moving the actuator arm through the detents by hand to see what is going on. Do it with the car on stands, the engine running and a friend in the car with a foot on the brake to help.

If it works fine from under the car, the shift linkage is bad. If it doesnt work from under the car, the valvebody has a problem in the transmission.

[Joe 1320]

There is a shift cable that connects the shifter with the transmission "rack" (the external actuator). If this cable splits, you get at leat what you have now. Sometime you can't even get the car into geat at all. A pretty easy and inexpensive fix. You can disconnect the cable from the transmission and manually rotate the rack to select each position just to verify there is no internal problem.

[Iceman10129]

okay so I have the car up on stands but i dont have a friend and my parents are in Las Vegas. Should I not do this alone? and second what does the linkage look like?

[Joe 1320]

Read this:

http://shbox.com/trans/A4_trans_linkage.html