Is it harmful to keep driving while reverse is not operational? Can I keep driving it until I can afford the repair? How about semi-long trips of 200 miles round trip? Is that pushing my luck?
I have a 2.2 litre 4-cyl. auto. 1992 Camry. Reverse does not work with engine running. Neutral is now a drive gear. Shifts hard into 3rd/4th at high RPMs. Does not rev above 2500 RPMs in park.
All these issues resulted from the same incident. (I was rocking the car out of a snowbank by myself and alternating from drive to reverse)
I think your gear selector has been knocked out of whack. Can you disconnect the shift linkage? I have seen this a couple of times before. You can them shift to “park” by hand and see if the engine will rev normally. If it does then have the shift linkage reinstalled and adjusted to the proper specs.
From what you describe, it sounds like the manual valve is not indexed with the parking pawl, Therefore, when you are in ‘Park’ on the shifter the parking pawl is engaged but the manual spool valve is in the reverse position and when you are in ‘Neutral’ you are actually in ‘Drive’ on the spool valve. This is probably not going to be fixed by adjusting the external linkage cable. The pan will probably have to come off and the misindexing fixed between the manual selector and the manual valve. I cannot reconcile the high and harsh 3-4 shift.
I assume you can still start the engine in ‘Park’ and ‘Neutral’ so watch out when you try to start in ‘Neutral’ as the car will likely take off unless the service brake is pressed.
Good luck on this. Let us know what the transmission technician finds wrong.
Have your shift linkage repaired before you destroy your transmission…
Thats sounds like just a linkage issue. Get that straightened out and you should be fine unless the rocking did some other damage inside. Dont keep driving it like that. It should be a pretty straight forward fix, no need to open up the transmission.
transman