'82 AT linkage adjustment question

[BoiseShark]

Ok, so I have looked through the manual on adjusting the linkage on the automatic 3 speed transmission and now I would like to give you the symptoms and see if any of you might have an idea where to start.

My son's '82 will start out in second and I have read that the merc tranny was made to do this for fuel standards and that you can simply take out the slack in the accelerator cable and a little of the shift linkage to cure this problem. (possibly)

My real concern and the problem I would like to hunt down is this;

Putting the gear selector switch into the 1st position and starting out, I can shift into the 2nd position and the gear will change, but then when I select drive (3rd position) the car will actually go into neutral.

It is like the gear selector will not actually come down far enough to get into first gear even though the arrow is pointing at 1st.

I just had an idea to better explain what it is doing so I ran out to test it.

I started the car and ran through the gears with my foot on the brake. From Park there is a fairly long throw and then it notches into Reverse, one more down and it notches into Neutral but below that, there are only two positions felt on the shifter, Drive and Second before the shifter grounds out at the bottom of its throw and according to the PRNDL, there should be three positions D,2,1. This means that I am not able to manually put the car into first gear.

Any ideas as to where I should start looking?

[lfausty]

has the pcar been running and the trans issue just started happenin

fluid level ok ?

seem to say ur notching in(quiet) so no grind,clunk... wearing part, clearance issue - haha flex plate not backwards

throttle cable/body/valve check something needs minor adjusting that loosened ?

[BoiseShark]

so this might be the shortest thread in our history, but I pulled it up on ramps today and adjusted the linkage and took the slack out of the throttle cables etc and boom...1/2 hour later and she shifts like she should. Has first in I don't know how long and starts there as well.

I wish I could delete my post

thanks for the input lfausty. You were on to something with the minor adjustment thing.