streeing colume

[goldwing44]

I not sure if this the right place.The streeing cloume on my 71 F-100 doe the old fall out of park into nutural.Had trans rebuilt that helped little.Is this an easy fix I dont want to replace the whole colum
Dean Gray

[71highboy]

what do you mean it fell out of park into neutral did the shifter come loose you did not really explain what is going on with it.

[Racer Z]

Your spelling and grammar are atrocious. It's hard to understand what you really want.

I suspect that the "falling out" could be a worn or missing linkage bushing.

[fordman]

for the shifter coming out of park there could be several reasons. why it jumps so far i dont know exactly.
1 ford issued a recall notice or something about this. the only fix was to paste a sticker on either the visor or the dash control panel. "near the cigar lighter"
2 it could be related to a worn steering column shift tube tab wear. i dont think this is the problem.
3 it could be worn shift arm bushings. but i dont think that is it either.
4 it could be the cab mounts are rotten and the column is holding the wieght of the cab up and putting pressure on the shifter and column and making it jump.
5 inside of the turn signal collar [tss] there are some detents. that the column shifter rides in. that detent is known to wear after many years of use. and will let the shifter slip out of the detent into another gear . there are no replacement parts made to fix this detent. you have to buy a good used tss collar.

i would check all of these possiblities and you will find the problem.

[goldwing44]

sorry about the spelling I didnt read my post before posting it.Ok here is what happnes,and yes it was a big problem for early 70 model fords.The shift lever goes from park to reverse by itself or with a very light touch.I see that you can get kits to rebuild everything.Just not sure if that well do the trick
Dean Gray

[FORDification]

OK, here's what the problem is. The yellow arrow in this picture is the lock plate for the steering column. The green arrow is pointing to a slot in the lock plate. The shift lever has a tab which extends up into this slot when it's in Park, and is the reason you have to pull back on the shift lever to get it out of park...when you pull back, the shift lever pivots, pulling the tab out of the slot.



Here are some good close-up pictures of how this park lock is supposed to work.

Here's a shot of the lock plate and the tab at the end of the shift lever:



However, there seems to be a problem. It seems that the tab at the end of the shift lever doesn't extend far enough into the slot to truly lock it into place. In this picture, I'm holding the lock plate down onto the end of the shift lever, and it's as far as it can go:



As you can see, the tab doesn't even extend halfway into the slot! If the tab at the end of your shift lever is worn at all, then it's going to pop out pretty easily.

[Hawkrod]

Also note that the detent plates do wear out and break. You can buy them new and they are a relatively inexpensive thing (what is your vehicle worth?). They are on eBay or you can buy them directly from http://www.squarebirds.org/detent_thunderbird.htm. Hawkrod