Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting scared the sh*t out of me

i was heading toward the city, coming right off the base, so i held on the the auto-stickshift and kicked-her-down, i applied a little pressure, not alot of it, no squeezing, and the car went into neutral, and the engine sounded it like it was gonna explode..i let off the gas and wondered why the gears can change, without applying pressure on the button, or even hitting the brake to allow the button to be pressed in...

is there something faulty with the shifter that locks you out while you are driving?? any way to solve it without going into a shop to get ripped off?

Scared the hell out of me too, it happpened as I was in an intersection with traffic coming....

It's happened to me before too.....believe it or not, I think that's the way they all are. I've been in other cars and I'm able to move the stick into neutral as well. My mystique does it and so does my mom's cougar. Even my grandmother's 96 camry coupe does it too so it's not just ford messing up. Don't ask me why this is but it seems dangerous if you ask me.

Normal behavior - if your throttle ever sticks and you need to kick your car out of gear real quick you'll be glad you don't have to press the button

My friend back in high school had a 69 Riviera with a 4-barrel Buick 430 in it. One day it was running rough so while cruising along at 30 mph he decides to go to neuatral nad rev it a little. Well, the fool pressed the shift button and went right to reverse! He did a full positraction burnout in reverse while going forward at 30mph. Damn good thing they built them with the General Motors TH400 tranny or he'd of cooked it for sure. He said after sh|tting himself he just put it in drive and drove away.

This is normal, you can go through all the gears (N, D, 1, 2) w/o pressing in the button. The lock (or when you have to push the button) is only so you don't accidently knock it into reverse while rolling down the road, or slip it out of park.

Related question, what if, say it happens at freeway speeds? Never done it before, but should I stop before putting it back into drive? Kinda curious as to what would happen if I just shoved it back into drive.

If you were driving w/ the cruise on, that could be a bad situation. I'd think you would want to turn if off(cruise) before putting it back in drive, but I'd probably pull over and stop before putting in back in drive just cuz I wouldn't want to risk blowing the tranny up!

in my old car with an auto it would go drom reverse to neutral without pushing the button and from nutral to drive without pushing it, also it would go from drive to neutral, and up only from the lower gears without pushing the button, on one or two occasions (when i was running REALLY low on gas) i stuck it in neutral on the freeway, and just reved the engine up to the right speed and put it back in drive, never did the car any harm but its probably not a good idea........

i didnt get the cruise option with my car...i dont like going the same speed..i like intervals of HIGH ACCELERATION yea, i went to a neighbor down the street than has a 98 se and his does the same with auto...i guess it doesnt kill me if it happens agian, just let off gas and put it back into gear..no big prob

thx for the feedback

if you put it back into drive while moving, it goes back into whatever gear it should be in for that speed, IE: 3rd. I'm not sure about the specifics but I know that I did it a few times in my old car and didn't have any problems at all.