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I recently had a problem with my TH350 when I pulled into the garage Saturday after a 3 hour cruise. I had no problems during the entire cruise, but when I pulled in I couldn't shift the car into park - reverse was the farthest up it would go. I didn't want to force it and eventually turned the car off in the neutral position. I finally got around to being able to look at the car last night and managed to massage (read push) the shift lever up into park and I held it there so I could start the car. I immediately took it for a ride and all was well in corvetteland again as the car would now go into park. Then today I noticed this - when I stop the car on a rearward incline and shift into park, the car will roll about 1-1/2 to 2 feet before stopping. This never happened before and I'm not really pleased from a safety standpoint seeing how well our emergency brakes tend to work
Any ideas? I want to add that I do have a slight leak from my transmission pan gasket, but nothing I'd consider to be major. Did I damage something applying pressure to get it back into park? Could it be from low tranny fluid?
Low fluid won't have any bearing on this one. Park is 100% mechanical. Either the shifter (or cable) has a problem or there's an issue with the park pawl in the trans. This picture s a 400, but a 350 has the same basic parking setup. Look at the top of the trasn inside the case- there's a rod that runs from the selector shaft to the rear. In park, that rod is pushed to the rear- there's a spring on the rod and a cone under a guide. The cone pushes on the park pawl and forces it into lugs on the output planetary gear that's splined to the output shaft.
This picture shows the rod a little better- down the right side:
Thanks for the replies. I'll check that out since I need to change out the pan gasket anyway. What would cause the car to roll before engaging/coming to a stop? Is it the same problem?