Earlier this week, my 2007 A6 tranny cable disconnected after I got the car into the garage and into Park. Shifter didn't feel normal as it went into Park. Next morning, the shifter is really loose and goes thru all of the gear positions but tranny itself is still in Park. Looked at the rear tranny housing and see the cable is still connected. Then lifted the shifter module out of the console tunnel carefully and immediately see the cable is off the bottom of the shifter rod. Looks like the plastic grommet split circumferentially and most of the grommet is still attached to the bottom of the shifter rod pin. Can't pull the cable forward from inside the console tunnels so the cable itself seems to be good. So I have a new plastic grommet to install on the bottom of the shifter rod and I will need some more slack in the cable to reattach the cable to the shifter rod pin.

I know I will need to manually put the rear tranny lever in Sport position which will push the cable forward into the console to the maximum possible extent. Questions: How easy is it to rotate the tranny shift lever in the back as the access looks really limited with the exhaust line blocking most the access?? Fingers only or a pair of pliers or something else to push with?? Will you be able to feel or hear the gear position detents from the rear?? Tranny is in the Park position now and the shift lever appears in its most rearward position.

Thanks for your feedback from those that have had to do this in the past.

 

Mine did the exact same thing about 2 weeks ago. If you give the cable a good tug from inside the car it will go into gear giving you more slack. It seems like it's stuck at 1st but it will move. I found out because I was about 70 miles from the house when mine broke so I pulled it hard since I was desperate haha. The hardest part is putting the little bushing in and not dropping it. I used a small screwdriver to help get it pushed in.

Good luck

 

I am worried about that too. But I may have to dig the remaining piece of grommet out of the cable end eyelet first.

 

I can now report Total Success. Put a heavy rubber glove on my left hand and was able to reach the rear tranny shift lever and worked it CCW one detent at a time until I reached either Sport or a point beyond as I counted 5 detents from the Park posiiton. Then came the chore of digging out the remaining hard plastic grommet from the console end of the shift cable eyelet with a pocket knife and small blade screw driver. Not easy and living with the fear of dropping either into the tunnel. Someone had previously posted that Dorman Kit #14041 at Autozone has one grommet out of five in the kit that you need. I also bought Dorman Kit #14055 which seemed more specific to GM vehicles 2004 thru 2009. I used the 14055 kit and it was perfect. Used silicon spray and a pair of adjustable pliers and when I finally got the new grommet and the pliers in the correct alignment, the grommet popped into the eyelet completely. After getting the shifter pin snapped into the new cable eyelet grommet, I found that I needed to rotate the rear tranny shift lever back CW two detents to retract the cable enough for me to seat the shifter module back down on the console tunnel floor. After reinstalling the 4-10mm nuts, I shifted from Park thru to Sport and checked the rear tranny shift lever to make sure it was following the console shifter. It was as another indicator that I didn't have a cable separation elsewhere. Console trim piece went back together easily after connecting the 8 wiring harness plugs. Test drive was successful. Saved many hundreds of dollars since the dealer would have charged for the entire cable replacement plus avoiding the risk of towing damage from my home. So lucky that this failure happened at home.

PS - I had thought about going thru the bottom of the car to get to the front cable grommet in case I found that the cable had separated instead. The shop manual says you have to drop the exhaust mid pipe and then the tunnel bottom cover to replace the cable. I am glad I decided the problem was likely the front shifter grommet and chose to go thru the interior top instead. Glad I decided that as I don't think I would have had clearance to replace the grommet alone from below as there are a couple of fuel tank lines running thru there between the tunnel and the drive torque tube.

 

Nice job!

 

Had the same thing happen to me about 6 months ago, also in my garage. The instructions I found on this forum were outstanding. I had the satisfaction of doing the work myself.

Good job Gold.

 

Does this grommet problem affect all years of C6 automatics? My 2010 has 41,000 miles on it. Is it a ticking time bomb?!

 

Yes. As the plastic gets more brittle with time and temperature, it becomes prone to splitting and disconnecting the transmission leaving it stuck in whatever position is just happens to be in. The front grommet is far more likely to split than the rear one but there certainly have been reports here of rear grommet failures as well.

 

Been there done that front and back so I guest i'm good for a while. Lol