How To Know And What To Do When Your Shifter Linkage Is Broken

Bushing Fix
2 min readJan 13, 2017

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Gear is one of the most important functions in driving. It gives you the power to drive in certain speed ranges and allows you to regulate your speed to remain safe on roads. When you put you car in gear by pressing clutch and giving command with handle, shift selector is moved to indicate the transmission. Shifter linkage is responsible for communicating the change in the gears and if it gets broken or harmed, it causes the irregular management of gears which is very dangerous while you are driving the car. When the shifter cable is broken or misplaced, you start facing problems in managing the gear but identifying this problem clearly is not always easy. If you are not familiar with the symptoms, you might be putting your life at risk by not fixing the cable at the earliest.

There are some common symptoms of broken shifter cable that are similar in both automatic and manual transmission vehicles. You can face problems in turning off vehicle when even after several attempts to turn off, it won’t easily shut down. This happens due to the broken cable, as you are not able to remove the key from ignition. Another common problem you can face is that indicator will have problem indicating the right gear. This clearly denotes that either the shifter cable is broken or misplaced. When you fear of having a broken shifter linkage, always make sure that the gear is neutral or on parking when you are about to start off. There are different ways to deal with a broken shifter cable.

Earlier, the only solution to fix a failed shifter cable was to replace the entire cable. It could only be done with external help and servicing of vehicle. But lately, a new solution of the problem has been introduced by top companies, where you can conveniently fix shifter cable with a portable kit consisting of tools like bushing and coupling turns at much lower shifter cable replacement cost. These kits contains the versatile tools that are suitable for a range of vehicles. There are simple instructions following which you can fix the problem at your garage only. You can find helpful videos, tutorials and pictures for easy guide to use the toolkit on the websites as well.

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Bushing Fix

Bushing Fix is an engineering firm specializing in the design and manufacturing of automotive parts. For details, visit: https://www.bushingfix.com/