Thanx for the info..

I ordered a replacement USED column, it came in today, but had no key.
After taking a good look at it, it looks like I can take the whole
shift assy. off of the purchased column and transfer it to the one in
the car. I expect to have to remove the column from the car to do it.

I dont want any surprises so if anyone has some tips/tricks to this,
feel free to chime in.

Was just planning on disconnecting battery 2 min. beforehand..

You need to get your problems straight.

In the first post, you said the shifter drops from Park to Reverse without
the need to depress the brake pedal. Now youa re saying the shifter can go
from Drive to Reverse at speed.

These are two different problems. There's a chance of a relationship between
them because they both involve the shifter, but one is a serious problem
that ought ot be fixed the other is a problem that arises from years of
abuse, and a small amount of care can prevent the trouble from occuring.

There are serious safety issues with a vehicle that can go from P to R
without activating any kind of lock-out. This is a project worth going
after.

While it could be very inconvenient to shift from D to R while driving down
the street, or freeway, there is scant mechanisms to prevent this entirely.
All one need to make the shift mormally is pull up on the shift lever while
moving it. A test of the linkage is to hold the shift lever down while
moving it to see if it stops moving when you go from D to N.

You say the solenoid is working, I assume you are saying that you can hear
it firing.

Have you ever seen the inside of a luxury car? Typically these cars have a
series of gates that the shifter must pass through to change from one gear
to another. The driver manuvers the shift lever sideways to get from one
position to the next. Typically, the movement from D to N is a straight
line, no sideways movement is needed, and from R to D is a movement that is
assisted by a spring, so the driver gets the feel of a straight pull. The
pull out of, and push into, P is the most complex of the gates. This is an
attempt to protect Park from an inadvertant selection that can put the
vehicle into motion, or rip the transmission right out of the car without
notice -- depending on what other stuff is going on when the lever is moved.

Your truck has the same gates, but they are hidden from view. You negotiate
the gates by pulling the shifter lever towards the steering wheel. Most of
us are careful -- you sound like you go to great pains to be careful -- when
we operate a vehicle. We pull the lever while depressing the brake pedal. We
make sure the vehicle is at a full stop before we attempt to change
direction -- forward or reverse, not left or right -- and we select the
lever position that gives us the gear we want.

You have the misfortune to work behind a bunch of creatons that don't care
about the physical well being of a motor vehicle. Those people appear to me
to have rammed and crammed the shift lever with ruthless abandon, and now
you want to fix the results. I'm not clear on why you want to do this, or
why the city does not simply take the truck to the local service department
for repair because it seems to me that there is a strong argument that the
vehicle presents a huge liability for the city. Indeed, I can't help but
wonder what liabilities YOU might be presenting by servicing something that
you may not be qualified to fix. (Sure, you and I both know that you could
do this job on your own truck. But, if it happened to come to a lawsuit
against the city, I'm not sure the city could defend itself from your
repairs that went awry.)

Now, if your job is to maintain the city fleet, then by all means, jump in.
But, if you are a driver that wants his rig to be right, my advice is to
make sure you are not creating a liability nightmare for your department.

I forgot, sorry, I think you said ambulance. Ambulance fleets are frequently
private companies, not city operations. I still think there are liability
issues here for whomever is responsible -- the city or the fleet owner. I
admire your desire to make this right, but if you share the truck with other
crews and one of them walks away from the truck, and it rolls away from
them, they are sure to say, "sh.t, I thought Joe fixed that problem." In
which case, the other guy's lawyer is sure to ask, "Joe?" Surely you can
connect the dots from there.

Good luck.

In the