Today me and some friends took my 2005 5.4 4x4 SCREW up to the hill to look for some christmas trees. We ran into some pretty good snow (about a foot and a half) the truck ran great all through the stuff. Until we shut it down to cut down some trees. When i returned I found out that I couldnt start the truck in "Park" so I shifted over to neutral and it fired up. It only got worse from there. Later I couldnt even shift the truck into neutral. My shifter would free fall from park to 1st. And i thus i couldnt even start the truck.

A mile and a half hike in snow up to my knees later I found 2 bars of cell reception and placed a call to a mechanic friend. He informed me of the manual switch on the side of the tranny. I used that to limp back into town.

Heres the weird part. Now I have to climb under the truck and switch that switch to a certain place to start the truck. Then i can grab my shifter and shift into "D" and it drives fine. But i have no control of the gears from inside the cab.

So basically i think i broke a link or something. Sorry for the long post but im curious if anyone has any ideas? or know what something like that would cost?

 

It sounds like you may have broken the locking mechanism on the shifter cable. I don't remember exactly what it would look like on your truck, but there should be some kind of adjustment built into the shifter cable at the bracket under the truck. Try grabbing the cable by the bracket underneath and see if there is a lot of play in the cable. I'm not doing a good job of explaining it so if you can't figure it out post a picture and I bet someone can help you.

 

I took the truck to the local transmission shop. They figured out that the linkage somehow broke free of the clip that held it in place and it rubbed against the exhaust manifold and melted in two. He said he's never seen it happen before but he fixed it quick. Had to get the part shipped in but the truck was only out of commission for a day.

Now i just have to figure out how to adjust the indicator arrow.

 

This MIGHT help you:

https://www.f150online.com/forums/ar...inter-fix.html