hi all, my 87 volvo 740 can only go forward. the reverse lockout lever broke on the stick shift. y'know, the black pull-thing that you need to pull to get it into reverse. i've scoured the net for some sort of repair info, but i could not find any.
has anyone had a similar experience and/or know how to fix it? i'm guessing it's a wire of some sort that lifts a latch that otherwise catches somewhere...
thanks! g13
It isn't a repair for beginners.
Jack up the car, undo the bolts holding the transmission crossmember, and lower the transmission with a jack enough so you can get a small allen key on the little screw under the shift lever.
Remove the allen key, then remove the rod that fixes the lever to the shift rod, and unplug the wires leading from the shifter.
Remove the rubber bellows from the shifter; then remove the reverse lockout (two bolts), then use a tool to remove the circlip holding the lever in place.
The lever should then be able to be removed, including the rubber and plastic pieces it is held in place by.
Put on workbench; remove shifter nob with switch, then force off the chrome cover to expose the guts.
My suggestion: get a repair manual.
hi mr.v, thanks for your fast reply. it does sound like a complicated job. i actually removed the nob. the black ring/paddle has a black notch that goes into the chrome cover. there is where i believe the breakage happened. the ring just slides off, and whatever that was supposed to have been looped around that notch seemed to have snapped. although i couldn't see it properly, i think it looks like a zip tie, leading me to believe that the previous owner must have had the same problem and used simple fix.
my question is, do i need to remove the entire thing? or since the "break" happened right where the ring meets the wire, i could simple remove the chrome cover (somehow) and just do a quick fix?
also, will this service manual describe the repair?
Mr. V wrote:
You can probably fix it without removing the whole shifter, it's really not very hard to take it apart in place.
That manual is worth having, I don't recall whether it covers this specific issue, but it does have lots of useful information.
Someone familiar with Volvos might be able to repair it with the lever still in place, but I doubt that a newbie could.
Tough to slide the chrome cover off: need to drive out the little roll pin, which IIRC is sited pretty low on the lever, presenting access issues.
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