I realized recently that the button on my gearshift doesn't do anything. I can shift from P->D and back again without pressing it. It is needed to shift from D->B, but not B->D. Obviously, This is not correct, and kind of worry's me a bit, because its possible to shift into park without pressing it. Not that I make a habit of hitting the shift handle a lot. I'd assume this is not a super fun fix, but I'm wondering if I need to worry about it much, and how id go about fixing it.
Here's what the book says is s'posed to happen, so yeah, yours is being weird: The shift out of P is supposed to require both holding the button, and pressing the brake pedal. Does the brake pedal interlock part still work? Or are you able to shift from P without holding the button and without holding the brake? You have an oldish car by this point that's seen a lot of shifts of that lever, so I could believe if something has worn out. The usual thing I remember reading about here with old gen 1s is when the grommet attaching the park cable wears out (so then you can move the lever but either can't really park or can't really unpark, I forget which way that usually went). There are threads about that you can find here with a search. People did come up with workable fixes for that. The repair manual just tells how to remove the whole shift selector assembly or reinstall it, but not how to take it apart or repair it. Toyota would've just said to replace it with a new one. Probably you'll get your best practical info by searching up the threads from folks who worked out fixes for the park cable, even though that's not exactly what's happened to yours.
I don't think that it does, but every time I shift into park, I press the pedal. I seem to remember not having pressed it in the past, though. I mean, I have a source for a spare anything for this car. I can just go pull one out of the junkyard near me. If Id be able to see how to replace the assembly, I can do it. This doesn't really match my experience, yea. It shifts fine and everything. Interestingly, though, I found out that my actual foot pedal parking break doesn't work at all the other day. Been meaning to get around to it, but It's not like I do much parking on hills here, so i just use the park gear and it's fine.
The brake-pedal interlock is only supposed to affect shifting out of Park, not into Park. If the lever is in P, are you able to move it to R without your foot on the brake? (With or without holding the button.) Ok, well, that much is easy to find in the repair manual: Toyota Service Information and Where To Find It | PriusChat But sometimes the repair-manual procedures turn out to be hard ways of doing something. This one, for example, has you taking off the steering wheel and lower dash finish panel, upper and lower column covers, and combination switch, before getting to this assembly. I've never tried it, and maybe that's all necessary, or maybe some folks have figured out faster ways. That's why if it were mine I'd be looking up those threads from people who've had the cable grommet fall off, because if there's anybody around here who's worked out extra quick ways to get at that shift selector, it's gonna be them. Yeah, understood that yours is doing something different. It's just that the more common complaint about that assembly has tended to be the grommet business, so those are going to be the threads where you find people's experience working on that selector.
Hmm. So both the button mechanism and the shift lock solenoid have problems, or there's one mechanical problem in there that is affecting both. In my experience with that kind of thing, it's often pretty clear what's going on just as soon as you have the mechanism out where you can look at it.
