will not start in park

[bwishwee]

My 1985 740 GLE will not start in park. However, it will start in neutral. Are there switches in the selector to clean or replace? any ideas? thanks

[LaRy]

To the left of the drive selection lever it is an electrical contact block, checking if you are in neutral, park or drive. This block could of course have some bad contact, but it has good quality. The position of the selection lever is very important, you have a small windows indicating in what gear you are. For a good function, this indicator must be covering the whole selected window with the white indicator. If it is not in the "center" the electrical function is also wrong and it will not work as expected. In some Volvo's you get the feeling that everything is loose under there, you can move the lever around and also the selector indicator is moving. If the selector lever is having play, it can be adjusted by a conical nut around the gear selector shaft. It is also easy to take out the electrical block, and then it can be checked for function and oxidation.
If the indicator is not in absolute correct position, the instruction book for the auto tran is recomending that the length of the two rods selecting the gear should be adjusted, but this is easy to read but hard to do, because they will be adjusted under the car and they are of course very rusty. You will also need instructions how to adjust them, this instruction is complicated.
I think that your indicator unit is moving around and this is causing the problem. Then you can make the same solution as I made. I took a aluminum plate between the rear fastening bolt of the gear indicator unit to the rear fastening bolts for the complete gear selector unit . This is working better than ever, the accurasy of the selector is perfect!