paterico

Hey guys,

I hate joining a forum just to ask a question but I'm in a bind. My neighbor owns a C5 and the shift cable broke so I volunteered to help him replace it.

TL;DR version, I replaced the shift cable, used the correct AC Delco cable, and I had the transmission and gear shift selector in neutral when connecting the cable.

Now the car seems to have difficulty finding neutral and reverse correctly. When I put the gear shift selector into reverse or neutral, sometimes R puts the transmission into neutral, sometimes it puts it into reverse. It also seems like R and N on the gear shift selector put the transmission into reverse.

I'm lost. I used the correct AC delco cable, it's not kinked or bent, and it's correctly attached into the brackets on both ends.

I realize I'm a asking one of those annoying noob/first-timer kinds of questions but I'd really like to get my neighbors car fixed correctly.

Thanks guys,
Patrick

GCG

Read this thread. It has detailed directions for the replacement procedure. Compare it to what you did and perhaps you can find what went wrong

paterico

"If installing a NEW transmission shift control cable, remove the shipping guard from the adjuster lock. "

Well I definitely missed that. Does that mean that there's a cable adjuster built into the cable?

Chris Stewart

Yes it looks like this.

paterico

You guys are awesome. Thanks! Not used to such a welcoming crowd. The guys on some of the other forums I frequent aren't as nice to noob questions like this.

I did some digging and found this:

Shift Cable Adjustment

Can someone help explain how this works? I'm guessing it just locks the end of the cable at a specific point to correctly locate the neutral position of the transmission to the neutral position of the shift lever?

Edit: Guessing that lock engages these little teeth?

Chris Stewart

Correct and throw the red thing away.

paterico

that did it!

You guys are amazing. Thanks again!