Congrats on your purchase. i 'worked' a problem with same symptom on my 99 SVT through 3 dealers, 3 transmissions and a clutch change. There is a long thread on this board from earlier this year related particularly to 99 SVT's and their MTX 5 speed. It is a real problem and has been linked to an assembly process issue - i believe. To make a long story short, after tranny number 2 when i kept telling the dealer it wasn't fixed and i didn't want a new tranny they finally changed the clutch assembly and this solved the problem. My specific symptoms were: stick was stuck in neutral gate, most often after starting the car up when parked and trying to get into reverse. Was never an issue for 1-2 or other shifts, just from stop into reverse or parked into any gear. Double clutching did *not* help, but shutting the engine down and shifting into a gear while engine off *always* worked. Overall, the problem was intermittent but i could reproduce for service people by basically rocking the car back and forth in the dealer's lot (R-1-R-1) and it would eventually get stiffer and stiffer and then lock up. Bottom line - tranny replacements did *not* work for me and several other local 99's but clutch replacement did. Can provide name of service manager at local shop who can hopefully point you to the right solution. Good luck! [i don't know how far back you can trace on this board....but this is all recorded earlier this year].
Linas (Ottawa, Canada)
