Not Actually In Park How to Diagnose and Align Shift Indicator on Your Car or Truck

Dude, I've really got to go.

Oh yeah?

You don't understand. I'm just gonna stop here.

Stop right here. Right here is fine. Oh, hey, now the truck is going backwards.

Oh God. Sorry, dude. Sorry. Whoo, that could have been bad. Hey, friends. It's Len here from 1A Auto. So, today in the studio, I've got a truck in here, and I want to talk to you about one of the reasons why I could figure out, why the gauge cluster might be different than the actual gear selection I'm in, in the transmission. Now, this can be very scary and unsafe in some situations, so I kind of wanna talk to you about it.

A lot of times, the cable to adjust this is gonna be located underneath the dash. So, I'm gonna go ahead and take off this plate right here, there'll be another plate behind it for me on this particular application, and then I'll show you what we're dealing with. Now, at this point, I have access to where the cable comes down and around. And you can see that it has a little twisty knob on this. As I turn this, that's gonna move the indicator up along the console there. You can see down along here, I have the area that's gonna move. And, of course, that's gonna make the cable move. Every time that cable moves, it's gonna move the indicator up along the cluster.

So, now, what happened to me? I was driving. I wanted to stop real quick. I was kind of in a hurry, to be honest with you. I went ahead and slapped it into what I thought was parked. Looks like it is. When really, it was in reverse. If you look at this right here, it looks like I'm pretty close to in park, if you ask me. But, if I actually do put it in park, the indicator almost disappears. Now, obviously, something like this didn't just happen to me, it's probably been like this for a little while or even just kind of gotten worse over time. Maybe while I was driving down the road, I had it in drive, and the indicator was actually on either side of the D, whether it's towards the neutral or even towards the number two over there. More than likely, I just didn't really mind. You know what I mean? I'm used to it. It is what it is. But sometimes, things happen to slip your mind especially if you've got other things on your mind. Or even maybe you let somebody borrow your vehicle because they needed it for something such as maybe moving or whatever the case it may be. They go ahead and do the same exact thing and potentially put themselves in a very dangerous situation.

So, you probably wanna know how to fix this, right? On some vehicles, if you just go ahead and get underneath the dash, you're gonna be able to access where the adjustment point is. Follow this cable, you're gonna be able to find a little spinny wheel here. I'm just gonna go ahead and adjust this until the indicator lines up with the P for park. Okay. So I have it lined up with the P, but I don't wanna stop there. You wanna make sure that you have the key in the on position, then we're gonna run it through all the gears. There's reverse. It kind of looks like I'm on the left side of that. Let's hit neural. Once again, still on the left side of it. I'd really like to be in the center on these because as you can tell, the further I get down the line... Oh boy, look at that one. That's really not lined up. Let's continue adjusting.

So this time, I'm just gonna go ahead and put it in neutral, and I'm gonna bring it to the center of that end. That looks pretty good. Let's run it through the gears again. Looks like we're getting closer to that number one. Okay. Two. Drive. Looks like we're kinda on the side of that one. You know what? That really doesn't look too bad. Now, with the proper adjustment, it should look pretty much like this. And in all honesty, if you're a little bit off on the one right there, who really uses the first gear aspect of this? Typically, when you're driving, you're gonna be using park, reverse, neutral, drive, in most cases.

So, that's where I'm gonna have the shift indicator lined up with. Now, not every vehicle is gonna have an adjustment underneath the dash for the indicator. There are some other types of vehicles that will have something that's a little bit more electronic, essentially down near the transmission, you're gonna have the selector shaft. When you shift the gears, it's gonna spin that shaft. While right on that shaft, it also has something on it that's gonna go ahead and talk to the computer of the car and let it know what gear it's in, so it kinda knows what's going on. When that happens, it's also gonna light it up on the indicator up here. So you might see that the D is lit up in green, or red, or whatever the color might be. Other vehicles aren't even gonna have an adjustment at all. They're just kinda on there, you put it into drive, it lights up a D on the dash and you know you're in drive. There's nothing that I can do to change that, so, I don't really need to get anymore into that.

Okay, friends. That's pretty much what I've got for you for if you're having an issue with your shift indicator being misaligned with the transmission shift or linkage. Of course, if this is happening to you, you might find that you have different types of situations going on. Maybe you don't have the cable with the little adjustment there. Maybe you had to get underneath the car, and you have the adjustment right on the transmission. Or maybe, you have a newer type of car, and you don't even have any access to any of that. The car pretty much just says what gear you're in and you have to assume it's right.

I hope you liked the video. I hope you learned a little something. If you did and you wanna talk about it, leave it in the comment section below because I always love to hear from you. Of course, if you liked the video or loved the video, smash on that like button for me. It will mean the world. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe and ring the bell. That way you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.