Okay, so this may be a bit of a long winded explanation, but here goes. I recently purchased a 99 Durango 5.9, with a 46RE, and have been driving it for about two months. I'm a second-year apprentice, and don't know much about automatic transmissions to begin with. I'm learning as I go.

About a week and a half ago I started to notice that the truck was hanging on to first gear a bit longer than I would like, shifting into second around 35 to 40 km an hour at roughly 3000 RPM. I didn't know when the fluid and filter has been changed last, so I changed the filter, refilled it to capacity and flushed the system.

I took it for a test drive, and it still did the same thing. So I did more research and came across a lot of discussion on forums regarding the TV cable, and how to adjust it. I made a minor adjustment, and noticed a bit of a difference, but decided to go ahead and replace a few other sensors to eliminate them as potential culprits. I replaced my throttle position sensor, my transmission output shaft speed sensor, and my vehicle speed sensor, above my rear differential. I also had future plans to replace the governor pressure solenoid and sensor, but didn't learn about those until after I had already dropped the pan and changed the fluid and filter.

I took it for another test drive and it seemed a bit better, and after a few more adjustments to the TV cable it seemed to be shifting fine.

It drove well for a day or two, until today. I drove it to work, no problems at all. I went to start it after work, and it refused to start. It was exhibiting the same symptoms as if my starter had quit, but after all the research I've done in the last week regarding these transmissions and the problems they can have, I remembered reading about the neutral safety switch. I put it in neutral and attempted to start it, and it fired up first try. So I replaced the neutral safety switch as well.

I pulled into my shop, and one of the 3rd year apprentices told me that he had a Dakota with the same transmission, and overtime rust buildup on his shifter linkage prevented it from moving smoothly, so he attempted to spray some lubricant on my shifter linkage. I also heard him tapping what sounded like a wrench on it in an attempt to free it up. I was stupid enough to trust him, as he is a more experienced tech than I am. It started for me in park three times when I tested it, so I was satisfied with the repair and drove my truck home. When I got home, my truck wouldn't shift into park.

I crawled underneath my truck and found that my shifter linkage above my pan seemed to have play in it, but as I previously stated, I'm not very experienced with automatic transmissions, and have never disassembled a shift linkage before, and also I'm not sure how to tell if it's working correctly or not.

The symptoms are:

I can't shift into park. When I put the shifter lever into the park position, it only goes up far enough to grab reverse.

There also seems to be quite a bit of dead space between the gears, in the sense that I can move my shifter lever up and down 1 to 2 inches between reverse and neutral, and also between neutral and drive.

The distance between Drive, second, and first all feel correct. I'm still able to drive the truck, being that I can feel where reverse, neutral, and drive are. But I had to leave it parked in gear with my E brake on for the night.

Does anyone have a link to information regarding how to properly set up/adjust the shift linkage on the transmission? Or any reason why I wouldn't be able to get it into park? I sort of want to fix this on my own, as I lost faith in a few of the guys at my shop today. Any help would be greatly appreciated.