Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Reverse?

Greetings all... I just purchased a '99 SVT over the weekend and couldn't be happier. My wife thinks the stupid grin on my face is just about the funniest thing she's ever seen

I do have on question though. We testdrove the car and everything was fine, but after pulling into my Grandmother's house (gotta bring the greatgrandchild over or I'd be in soooo much trouble) we could not get the car to go into reverse. Fortunately her driveway is on a hill so we just coasted backwards and were off. A few miles down the road we pulled into a Wendy's and I took the shifter bag off and noticed there was some sort of stop bolted into the block at the base of the stick. Using my trusty utility knife I unscrewed the bolt and removed the stop and now everything is working fine. My only question is do any of you have any idea why there might be a stop placed over the reverse gear? As I said, everything seems to be working fine... I just want to make sure it wasn't there for a reason.

I'm not to sure, but that sounds like the reverse lock out?

It's to prevent someone from shifting from 1st to reverse or some other terribly destructive shift.

Either way, I can't say for sure as I suck and have an automatic. Go go CD4E !

I'll try to post a picture of it tonight, might help

Thanks for the quick responses BTW.

Sounds to me s stupid mod if someone do that. There is no chance you do a bad shift, shifting in reverse when you wnaa go n reverse. The reverse in under the 5th, to the complete opposite of the first gear. Why don't you haven't try reverse while doing your test drive before buying? this way you were able to ask the previous owner. Sounds weird!

Nic.

P.S. The only time i saw a car with no reverse or lock up, the car was use for drag racing.

I'm feeling stupid, i think i know what you mean. You have a lock up on MTX tour ( i do an MTX). If you don't know how it works, here is the answer:

Put your thumb on the top of the shifter knob;
Using two fingers, put them bjust below the shifter knob ball, there is a king of ring, you have to lift it up.

Now to be sure, if you go straightly into reverse without doing any action of this kind, you removed the lockup.
That lockup device should be on.

Nic.

Reverse lock out... you gotta love it. I remember when i first bought my 99 SVT and discovered it. I was trying to back out of a parking space but couldnt get it in reverse. It took me about 3 minutes to figure it out. I felt like an idiot!

My first thought was there was some type of lockout but I couldn't find anything to press and it felt like there was something actually blocking the shifter from going in to gear. I started feeling things through the bag and could tell there was definitely something there. I played around with removing the bag and finally just ripped it off (which is actually what you're supposed to do, so that worked well) and this is what I found.

Image 1

This picture is to illustrate how it blocked the shifter when I tried to put it in reverse:

Image 2

The third image is of the actual bolt and 'head' I took out. I have since reinstalled the bolt, minus the head.

Image 3