I was driving today, and decided to put in 1st gear, and as i kept driving it changed gears to 2nd and even 3rd..like it was in drive?

I put it in D and then 1 at the next lights and it stayed in 1st??

what could this be and am i looking at a major problem??

its the first time ive had this happen to me..

Id say it will be the gear selector switch on the side of the gearbox. Its on the p/s its a white thing with a plug in it and from memory 3 Philips screws? There not expensive i think like $15-20 from a wreckers.

Yes, correct switch, but wrong screws.

It is held on by two 8mm hex bolts. May even be 7mm.

I had this issue a short while ago. Was intermittent, but was fixed as soon as I installed the replacement swtich.

BenJ

Yeah i couldn't remember.

ok its good that its a cheap fix, is it easy to replace this part?

I couldn't think of many other repairs that could be

easier that is.

http://www.trueblueford.com/discussion/ ... php?t=4167

its sh!t easy to change mate, I just did mine yesterday in 5 mins.
undo 2 x 8mm bolts, 2 plugs (one with a pin lock) then just pull it off the shaft.
Initially I cleaned my one but after 400kms its started playing up again so I just went out and got a new one. So far so good.
While you're changing it make sure you give terminals in the plugs a good clean coz they get pretty gunked up.

But I wouldn't bother with a second hand one considering the price of a new one, a used one could be filthy and fail again soon.
I got a brand new one from Nepean Spare Parts St. Marys for $100. Cumberland Ford quoted me $132.

By the way, before you change it, initiate the instrument cluster diagnostic mode (search it if your not sure) and see what it shows as the gear position (mode 8) when the problem occurs. Mine was showing '0' as the gear position a lot of the time then switching to P, R, N completely randomly, dropping out of gear suddenly, re-engaging with a bang, all sorts of funny sh!t.