1st gen prius drives but does not park

Don't know about your problem, but I have a sudden urge to go surfing. Do you have a friend for my buddy?

 

It's in the dash Take the shroud around the dash shroud around the gear lever off and you'll find it.

SM-N960U ?

 

THAT'S PROBABLY AUSTIN IN CENTRAL TEXAS.

 

<bump> if you search on "33820-47020" you can find a couple of used transmission shifter cables (used) for sale on eBay.
Prices range from US$60 to $US140 or so; your mileage will vary.

 

Hooray necroposting! My '01 did this earlier this week, and this post helped me fix it.

When I left my house, the shifter was fine. When I got where I was going, I shifted into Reverse to back in, and the shifter was much easier to move than normal. The car went into reverse and moved, but I was suspicious that I wasn't actually in Park when I stopped. I tried moving the car with one foot hanging out the door, while still sitting in the driver's seat, and yep, no park. I drove it the rest of the day and just used the park brake when I stopped; it worked fine but I was a little bit nervous that it would go back into Park on its own.

The next day, I worked on it, and @rbdigital 's fix worked for me. I had a piece of windshield washer hose that didn't quite fit, and a piece of clear vinyl tubing that worked pretty well. The vinyl tubing had an OD of about 10.2 mm, an ID of about 7.9 mm, and a wall thickness of about 1.1 mm. The butt end of a 5/16" drill bit fits snugly into the ID, so I'm pretty sure that's the nominal ID of the tubing.

What worked for me was to have quite a length of tubing, so I could use the "extra" tubing as a handle. I pushed the tubing through the ring in the end of the shifter cable from the outboard side (the side furthest from the steering column), until just a couple of mm of it poked out of the inboard side.* I then pushed the ring and tubing together over the end of the peg, just enough to get it started. Then, I used a pair of Channellock-type pliers (aka water pump pliers), with one jaw on the cast piece that the peg is on, and the other jaw on the ring, to force the ring to seat all the way down over the peg. I worked the shifter a few times and was happy with it, so I used a knife to cut off the extra length of tubing.

(* I first tried poking it through much further, until about 10 mm of it stuck out, but then I found that the extra length tends to "balloon" up when you try to seat the ring on the peg, and you can't get it seated all the way on.)

Some notes:

If this happens when you're out on the road, all you really need is a Phillips screwdriver. Stop the car and put the park brake on. Kneel next to the car with the driver's door open and remove the one screw you can see on the bottom of the "pod" in front (FRONT) of the steering wheel. Then, sit in the driver's seat and turn the steering wheel one way until you see one of the two screws in front the steering wheel. Take that screw out, then turn the wheel the other way to expose the other screw, and take it out. You can then take the bottom half of the "pod" off.

You will most likely see the ring on the end of the shifter cable floating in space, near the peg on the shifter mechanism that it should fit over. Step on the brake and move the shifter handle to whatever gear makes the peg line up best with the end of the shifter cable. Put the ring over the peg with your fingers, and then put your finger or thumb on the end of the peg so the ring doesn't fall off again. Move the shifter handle to Park and it will push the cable to make the transmission go into Park. You can do the same thing to get it into Drive if you need to go somewhere.

(The ring actually bolts on to the end of the shifter cable, so there's also a chance that the bushing is fine and the ring is still on the peg, but the bolt came out. For that, you will probably find the bolt either inside the pod or on the floor, and can screw it back in by hand.)

There are detents in both the shifter handle *and* the transmission. This doesn't really affect anything, but I thought it was interesting. I discovered this by pulling and pushing on the shifter cable when it was not on the peg. I thought I'd just feel a click as it went into or out of Park, and nothing else, but there were a couple of "steps" to it somewhere in the R-N-D range. I couldn't actually get it into Park by pushing on the cable by hand; I had to put the ring over the peg and use the shifter handle to do it. (You can see the detent mechanism for the shifter just below the peg for the cable.)

The original bushing had a flange on at least one side, and possibly both. I found what was left of the original bushing in the bottom half of the "pod" that comes off of the steering column. It's black and I think it *used* to be rubber - it gives a little bit when I push on it, but it's got that old-dried-up-rubber feeling to it. One of the pieces I have has an L-shaped cross section, so it had a flange on one side; I haven't found any U-shaped pieces (flange both sides) but I can't rule it out.

The dimensions are in the attached sketch. I wish FreeCAD worked better than it did, but it's fairly painful to use. The headline numbers are that the ID of the ring on the shifter cable is 10.2 mm, the OD of the main part of the peg on the shifter is 8.0 mm, and the "bump" on the end of the peg is 8.4 mm. The "perfect" bushing would have about a 1.1 mm wall thickness.

 

If you have a harbor freight near you, go inside and buy their rubber grommet assortment box (4.99), one of the large ones will fit on there quite nicely. I've seen people make their own/repack stock motor mounts with some polyurethane that comes in a caulk tube, if you don't mind waiting for curing time and want more of the stock feel

 

Well, kind of. After I did what I described in the above post, it worked for a week or two, but then the shifter cable popped off of the peg on the shifter again. I tried various things before finding the fix that has lasted for a couple of months now.

tl;dr: Go get an E-clip with 8 mm inside diameter from a hardware store. Put the rubber tubing in the shifter cable ring, get the ring and the rubber down over the peg on the shifter, and then install the E-clip on the outboard end of the peg. The E-clip keeps the ring from popping off the end of the peg.

The 5/16" vinyl tubing that I mentioned above seems to be about the right size, but the shifter cable kept moving outboard as I drove the car. Eventually it would pop off the end of the peg on the shifter. I tried re-working how I put the tubing in the shifter cable and how I installed the cable over the peg, but it would fall off again.

I wanted to put something on the outboard end of the peg to keep the shifter cable from falling off. I thought about drilling and tapping the end of the peg for something like an M4 screw (roughly #8) and putting a big fender washer and a screw on it, but I decided that would probably be difficult to do with the shifter still installed.

The first clip-like thing I came up with was a length of bare 14 AWG copper wire (about the same as 2 mm²), I wound a long length of it around the outboard end of the peg, just inboard of the "bump" on the end of the peg, and then cut the wire to exactly the circumference of the peg and crimped it down to the peg. That seemed to make the shifter cable stay on longer, but it still eventually popped off.

I then came up with the idea of the E-clip. The local Ace Hardware had metric ones in various sizes; I bought one with 8 mm inside diameter for 69 cents, plus tax. I could get the clip part way on the shifter peg by hand, but I had to use a pair of pliers to get it all the way down - which is a good thing, because then it doesn't come off. The clip seems to be big enough that it keeps the shifter cable from sliding outboard past it. I installed the E-clip on July 3; it's now September 14 and it's still holding.

In the US, you probably need to go to Ace Hardware, True Value, or equal to get a metric e-clip - big-box stores like Home Depot, Lowe's, and Menards don't stock them in metric sizes. Since the shifter peg is pretty close to exactly 8.0 mm diameter, I think a metric E-clip will work best. If you're really stuck, McMaster-Carr sells them, but only in packages of 10 ($4.56, stainless) or 100 ($9.40, black phosphate). Grainger and Fastenal both have them in their catalogs, also in packages of 10, 50, or 100, but those companies are hard for normal humans to deal with. Outside of the US, metric everything is probably easier to find.

I have attached some pictures of how it looks installed. One of them is with the shifter in Park, so the shifter arm with the peg is pitched down as far as it will go. Another is in "B", so the shifter arm is pitched up as far as it will go. The last one is a detail of the E-clip, shifter cable, and peg.

I hope this helps!

 

I'm glad you included pictures, as I had no visualization of the item you were describing.

It looks like an e-clip or circlip should have always been installed there. Maybe it got lost somewhere along the way.

 

As far as I can tell, it didn't have a clip there from the factory. There was a flanged rubber grommet in the metal ring on the end of the shift cable. At the factory, that got pushed down over the peg on the shifter assembly, probably with some amount of force, and then the lip on the end of the peg was enough to keep the grommet and shift cable from coming off the peg again.

It seems like the lifetime of that rubber grommet is about 18-20 years in automotive temperature conditions, before it dries up, cracks, and falls out. Toyota doesn't sell the grommet loose piece, just the whole shifter cable at about $70. Various kinds of rubber hose can be used to replace the center part of the stock grommet, but they don't have the tight tolerances it apparently takes to keep the shifter cable end from coming off of the peg. Since somebody at Toyota in the mid-90s decided to make the peg exactly 8 mm diameter, it is amenable to "aftermarket" solutions like an e-clip.

 

These are the measures of the needed bushing. Still is missing something for retaining the piece in its place. Maybe this retainer washer could do the job. AMAZON:
Retaining Snap, E-Clip Retaining Washers Silver Easy To Install 304 Stainless Steel External Circlip for Shaft Groove Of Machine

 

yeah, I got a package of various size clips at the auto store, and one worked.

 

Thanks for posting this. It's exactly what was wrong with my prius. Your directions for repair helped me get my car going again quick and easy.