Ray Magliozzi
Dear Car Talk:
I have a 2000 Honda CR-V with 90,000 miles on it. Out of the blue, the shifter won’t slide into “D.” When you pull the shift lever toward you and move it out of Park into “D,” it stops in “N” and goes no further.
However, once it’s in “N,” if I stop pulling the lever toward myself and just push it down, it will then drop into “D” and drive and shift normally. But no matter what I do, I can’t get the shifter to go into the gears lower than “D.” The fluid is good and clean. I’m stuck.
— Shawn
I’ll add you to my long list of shiftless Car Talk readers, Shawn.
The 2000 CR-V had an older-style column shifter. As you say, you pull the shift lever toward you to release it from the locked park position and then move it down to select a gear.
It’s not unusual for an automatic transmission — particularly an older one — to allow you to shift from Neutral to Drive without pulling it forward. That may not be a problem. But its inability to shift beyond Drive into the lower gears means there’s absolutely something wrong.
And that something is probably the shifter cable. How quaint, right? Just a plain, old-fashioned, rusty metal cable. It probably started corroding after a quarter century of riding around underneath your car.
To properly diagnose this, a mechanic would disconnect the cable from the transmission and then try to move the shift lever. If the lever still won’t go into the lower gears, while completely disconnected from the transmission, then the cable is stuck.
Your mechanic can then try spraying a proverbial boatload of penetrating oil into the cable sheath from the transmission end and then moving the shift lever up and down until his arm goes numb. Or until the oil penetrates and loosens up the stuck portion of the cable. At worst, you’d need a new cable, which will probably run you about $400.
On the other hand, if the lever moves freely once the cable is disconnected from the transmission, then you’ve got a transmission issue. And in that case, my advice would be to consider it a loveable quirk of this 25-year-old car and drive it, as is, until it won’t go beyond Neutral. Good luck, Shawn.
Got a question about cars? Write to Ray in care of King Features, 628 Virginia Drive, Orlando, FL 32803, or email by visiting the Car Talk website at www.cartalk.com.
