professor229

I restored a 1994 C1500 W/T for my son because it only had 50,000 miles on it. It had a "miss" but I knew what that was and corrected it immediately with a $14 part from Rock Auto..... He has been using this truck for several years now but a couple of months ago, it was loaded with household items to take to a storage unit and as his wife drove it from their house, it did NOT shift from first to second gear..... I got a call and went over and used my truck to do the hauling but, first I wanted to check out the 1994.... pulled the tranny fluid dipstick and that was fine.... but there was ANOTHER problem in that the ignition key would not come back to a position to remove it... and was locked in the forward run mode (accessory) and would not move back.... I did start the truck again and tried to shut it off but the key locked up in the same place.... I ran the shift lever up and down a few times and eventually got the key out.... and when my son came home, he took the truck for a ride and again, the transmission would not shift out of first gear.... He parked it, noticed the key sticking but he too, eventually got the key out and that week, he drove the truck a few blocks to a reputable repair shop near them....everything seemed to work fine..... They kept the truck for a few days and finally called him and of course, stated.... "we could find nothing wrong and cannot duplicate the problem...." My son picked up the truck, drove it home, and has been driving it now for a month occasionally ...... and has not had the same problem.... Are the key and transmission shifting problem related? I checked on the linkage on the firewall to make sure that was OK... it was.... my theory was that there was a linkage problem that meant that transmission, although showing in "drive" was really somehow in "low" gear...... and if the linkage did not come back to the correct location, it would also explain why the key/ignition would not come back to the location where you could remove the key.... and that MAY still be the problem.... intermittent.... but has not re-occurred.... I though I would just toss this one out and ask what else we should look for or be aware of....... Thanks....