I recently bought a 1988 Volvo 245, last night it started to act up, refusing to shift gears and shifting late. I pulled over after about 5-10 minutes of driving, i just wanted to get close to home. The trans fluid seemed low so i poured a bottle from the gas station into it and immediately once i tried to pull out it wouldnt go into reverse or neutral, it just pulled me forward. It goes into neutral if the car is off but seems to be in drive all the time besides park. My friend took a look and basically my shift linkage is ****ed, i probably need some bushings but he mentioned i could have possibly welded my clutch packs together or something like that. I was wanting to know if there was any kind of temporary fix or if i should attempt replacing the bushings. If there was no way to fix it i was just going to try to find a manual swap for it but that will take time.
thanks

 

the bushings are trivial, they are little 1/4" plastic tube things that fit on the 6" long metal shift linkage, which connects the bottom of the shift lever to the lever on the transmission.

anything else is major.

a manual swap is quite a bit of work, you'll basically need a manual 240 to park next to yours and take the parts off it... at a minimum, you'll need the entire clutch+pedal assembly, the clutch master cylinder, the manual shift linkage and interior trim, the transmission, and the drive shaft. oh, and you'll also need to swap the 'flexdisk' on the engine for the flywheel from the manual transmission car.

if its the M46 4+OD manual, you'll also need the OD relay (which is different than the one on a automatic) and rewire the OD circuit.