When I shift into drive and reverse the gear shift is not truly lined up with the letters; in fact in reverse the backuplights do not come on, though I know they are working. How do I adjust the linkage to correct this problem? I have looked in my Hanes manual but it's not clearly written and the description of which distance to measure and so on does not make much sense to me. What do I need to do and how do I do it?

Thanks for any advice

 

If you take off the plastic box at the bottom of the gearshift you will see the light the lights up the numbers on the lefthand side of the gearshift (if you cant find it just turn the lights on and it should be obvious). When mine was doing that i just bent the bracket its in to point to the right place. About the back up lights. Does your car start only when it's in neutral and park and not any of the other gears? There is a plastic guide piece on the right hand side of the gearshift that cantrols the back up lights as well as the start cancel when its in gear. If you look there should be three metal contacts on it. One at the top for the start cancel in park one just below it to turn on the back uo lights and another just below the second for the start cancel in neutral. Make sure that the contacts are aligining right when the gearshift is the the correct gears. if it is then there is another problem with the back up lights.