Shift cable failure.

[Ghost]

Friend of mine's Volvo big block had increasingly stiff throttle and shift. He'd already had called his mechanic to replace the cables, probably had about a 10-day wait yet, but wanted to go out this past weekend.

Left the pier at idle in forward, didn't like the control feel and the engine raced up in RPM a little, so he pulled it out of gear, then decided to bag it and put it in reverse to creep back. It was moving faster than he wanted, so he went back into neutral.

The lever moved back to vertical, but it didn't come out of gear, and kept storming backwards. Had to kill it with the key. Scratched up the gel a little on "landing." Thankfully no one made the mistake of getting pinched trying to fend off.

[Lenny]

What year set up is it and whose shifter assembly?

[Ghost]

1999 7.4 GiDP with a Volvo side-mount shift unit with power trim thumbswitch. (Pretty standard stuff.) It was on my old Cobalt. It had grown VERY, VERY stiff to use, and did so over quite a long period of time(like, two seasons of griping that it was getting too stiff, and by the end of last season I drove it once and said "this is ridiculous, time to replace the cables.") so the good news is nothing really failed out of the blue--far from it. The replacement order was already underway, even. But I thought it worth letting people know about.