alan311

I'm making a new thread so Google indexes it and people can find it easier. I have a 2002 ES300. Repairs should be similar for other cars. I came back home and parked and found my Gear shifter just stopped working. It felt very loose. I thought something in the transmission broke but luckily I found it was just one part that was broken near the shifter. The cable coming from the transmission into the cable hooks into a pin on the gear shifter. There's supposed to be a bushing between those two parts and I found curved broken plastic in the shifter assembly so that must have been it. Broke after 20 years and a 150k miles. I have used the shifter more than other people do so maybe there was extra wear. The replacement bushing (see purple part below) cost more than it should have ($25) for the little piece of plastic it is but I had no choice as no one else seems to make it. I don't want to make this sound like an ad and be kicked out of this site so just search "ES300h Shift Cable Bushing" and you'll find it. If you got the bushing from where I did, they send a small piece of black plastic that is not part of the repair. Its just a small tool for helping the repair. Once you have the bushing delivered in the mail, some quick steps I followed:
STEPS
(1) Change the gear to D, 4 or 3 to make things easy for the next few steps. Screw off the gear ****
(2) Take off the center console that surrounds the gear shifter (pull it up from the bottom and it will come off easy). Take of the two electrical connectors from it. Change the gear to 1, it might help the console come off easier.
(3) Using a small flat screwdriver, carefully pry off the plastic guide box where the gear shifter bar comes up through. There will be 4 tabs for it, two on each side.
(4) Separate the clear plastic lighting assembly from the guide box. This is done on one side of it. Unscrew the small light bulb and now that thing wont come in the way of this repair. Less chances of putting stress on the wires for the bulb.
(5) Loop a piece of thread through the bushing so you accidently don't drop it in the center console.
(6) Now you'll have to look over into the where the cable's keyhole is from near the air vents at the top as thats the only place you can see what you're doing. Change the gear to R or N to make things easy for this part so the keyhole and the pin is easily accessible from the top.
(7) Apply a small amount of grease on the pin.
(8) Push the bushing into the cable's hole. If there are notches on the bushing they should be facing outwards (see photo of finished job).
(9) Now carefully push the cable's keyhole that now has the bushing, onto the pin. The pin has a lip, at least for the ES300 2002, so it wont come off easily once its pushed in. I tested it after the repair and indeed it didnt slip back out easily so it worked.
That's it, done. Reverse the steps for putting stuff back together. I've read replacing the whole cable is $1000 or something which is what auto shops may charge for this repair.






I put some thread through it so I accidently didn't lose it as I was trying to fit it in. Parts of the thread may still be inside but oh well, I couldn't risk it. I think its fine as its a soft material.


There it is, fixed.

FromFL

Yikes, another thing to worry about. Lucky you, it happened in your driveway.

alan311

Oh yea I was lucky! I'm now afraid to shift to park at intersections which I do sometimes and just leave the thing in Drive all the time.

Arsenii

Hello,

It probably is for the better, you are lucky that it's just the bushing got worn out. Any change of state for a transmission comes some bit of wear, and Park was only designed to engage a few times per day.

While you are stationary with Drive engaged, all you do is mix up the fluid in the torque converter, which can only increase the temperature, and only by so much, it doesn't cause any wear at all. Now you are asking the transmission to stop completely and release all the clutches, only to re-engage it all in a moment, causing a small shock through the internals, and a very small wear to the clutches. While the transmission was designed to withstand it all over a very long distance, now you are substantially increasing that load by switching into Park on every intersection, which won't do it any favors.

The thing is that you are not saving anything, and besides added wear, you also drastically decrease your reaction speed, should something happen on the road, since shifting back into gear takes time, I am pretty sure it may be illegal in some states because of that as well.

In short, just keep the gear engaged at all times, it is safer, and will make the tranny last longer.

In any case, thanks for the writeup!

Hope this helps and best of luck!

rapaulino2

Thanks for your post. A similar thing happened to me. I used the car the night before and when I try to start the car, it did not start on the park position. I then moved the shifter to the Neutral position and then the car started but when I tried to shift to reverse, the shifter went to the Reverse setting but the indicator on the dash board still shows that the shift was in the Neutral position. The same when I tried the other shift positions. Luckily, the car was in the garage and still there.

I will try to get access to the gear shifter assemblage. I hope to find a video to show me how to do it.