My son is down at Auburn University and his Ford Mustang gives him trouble shifting. He says sometimes it’s hard to shift into 1st gear, sometimes when he’s driving it’s hard to shift into 2nd. The other day he called me and said he could not get it into any gear while sitting in a parking lot. After wrestling with the shifter and me telling him maybe rev the engine up, it finally slipped into gear. Can you tell me what is going on and what can I do to fix it?
Thank you
Jim S.
Howdy Jim,
He could have a worn out clutch cable causing the shifting problem. There might be a small amount of manual adjustment that can be made to the cable to remove the excess slack. Also look under the dash where the clutch pedal attaches to the cable inside the vehicle.
There is a spool or wagon wheel looking thing there and that can wear out and cause slack in the clutch cable as well. If you don’t see any adverse play in the clutch cable that would cause this problem then the next place to look would be inside the transmission itself.
I would guess there should be about an inch worth of slack/freeplay in the cable when the pedal is up, anymore than that and the cable is either stretched out and needs to be replaced or adjusted. If no excessive amount of freeplay is seen in the cable, you probably have an internal transmission problem
Blessings,
Austin Davis