Brock Vs. Brake : Round 389

I love my Saturn. Let me get that out of the way. I've enjoyed driving it ever since I got it back in 2001 and haven't had any problems with it.

Except one.

A couple of years ago, my shifter started getting stuck in Park whenever it got cold. Seeing how we're in Canada, this was rather frequent. At first I thought it was just an annoying little quirk of the gearshift until I had to sit in my car for 15-20 minutes after work one night, cursing and praying and begging for the thing to just get into Drive so I could go home.

I took it to Saturn back in the day and they did everything except sacrifice a chicken on the engine block. About the only thing they didn't do was replace the actual gearshift. Miraculously, the sticking shifter went back to proper working order soon after and I didn't have any problems until last year.

It stuck once or twice shortly after Christmas so I took it to the local auto shop to see if they could fix it. Of course, they couldn't figure out what the problem was and it didn't do it again, so I figured it had finally been fixed or at least stopped acting up.

I thought that was the end of the sticky shifter until a week or two ago when it started to stick a bit. Great... just what I need when I'm home with two kids and no income.

Would the stickiness go away? Well, I thought so until the weekend when it started taking several minutes before the shifter would come unstuck. I dropped the car off yesterday and after explaining the symptoms again and hoping that the car would stick for them so they could experience the fun of not being able to take a perfectly fine car from Park to Drive, I sauntered on home.

Turns out it was the braking switch that was causing the issue. I've heard a clicking sound when I depress the brakes which usually indicates that the shifter will start sticking shortly afterwards. Thankfully it didn't cost much for them to do their little adjustments but I did notice that it was a little sticky still when I got in the car. They did recommend that I get the switch replaced if it acts up again so we'll see how things are this evening when I go out with the kids.

It's just a shame that a car which I like so much has such an annoying problem.