I have an erratic problem with shifting out of PARK after starting the car. It WILL NOT shift out of park. Turning off the engine, restarting eventually gets it to work. Sometimes it takes 10-15 minutes of doing that before I can get it out of park.

I have taken the car to a Chevrolet dealer three times. I get the same response each time: Can't find anything wrong. The advice is "Let it fail, and then we will know what to fix." That's not a viable situation. Is there any suggestion.......or WORK AROUND.......to this problem? The car is a 2008 with 29,000 miles on it.

Mykel

 

Classic and very well known issue with C6's. You can do a search on this forum for "stuck in park" and read all day long. A good Chevrolet dealer would know about this problem, and usually recommend replacing the whole shifter assembly. If you get the work done by a dealer, you may want to go to a different one than before.


Here is a link to the issue in the How-To area:

https://www.corvetteforum.com/how-to...in-park-368439

 

Here is another thread currently under review in the C6 General Discussion category:

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...use-found.html

Good luck.

GD

 

Thanks. I've had it with trying to get help out of that dealer. Won't be back.

 

There is also a trick to get it out of park that can get you out of a jam when this happens. When you get the hang of it it's not so bad, it involves pressing your finger down into the shift boot to the right of the shifter. You press down on the leather boot material and feel for the plastic pawl that moves up and down to release the shifter (when brake pedal and shift button are engaged) park lockout. The lockout is deactivated by the solenoid that is supposed to release the park shift lockout but commonly fails on these cars. Our C6 currently has this problem intermittently. Me and the misses have been using this trick for weeks now until we can get the real fix which is to have the shifter cable assembly replaced (as previously pointed out).

It takes some practice to get this trick down but it has really saved us quite a few times. You have to press down on this pawl while depressing brake pedal and shifter button at the same time. Sometimes the pawl sticks too and the shifter button has to be played with along with the rest of the conditions met to get the pawl to go down and release the shifter.

I didn't discover this myself, I read about it here in the forum. Someone else saved us all from this catastrophic condition by explaining this trick. Every C6 AUTO owner needs to learn it IMHO.

 

^ I was unaware of this. This is great info to know! Thanks klangstone!

 

My pleasure! Hope it helps someone like it has helped me.