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Reff. Post of 9 1 25 Con Ed
Finally looked at the parts manual which lists inner control lever with 5/15x24 threaded hole. Mine was 3/8x24.Looks as if it had been drilled and taped oversize once already. I did not want to go to, 7/16 so I called max and ordered another of the correct size. Found cap screws at local industrial supply house. Three auto parts stores did not have them. Installed new lever and cap screw and drilled hole for 1/8-inch roll pin. Installed reverse stop so that it fits tight against the transmission case. Went to adjust the shifting linkage. I can feel and hear four clicks but cannot seem to click in park/neutral detent. I believe that the control rod may not be moving far enough to fully engage the last p/n detent. I still have the pan off. Once again, I am totally lost. As always any and all suggestion comments are deeply appreciated
Happy

If you start in reverse, you will feel the clicks for low, drive, high then neutral, so 4 clicks in succession. When you keep moving the lever a significantly larger angle you will end up in park. Park does not have much of a "click" so to speak. This is because Park and neutral share the same detent but the leverage situation is a lot different in park. I can feel a slight click because I'm used to how it works, but it's much softer than clicking through the other gears.

You can tell you are fully in park trying to move the drive shaft with the emergency brake off and the rear wheels lifted off the ground. The drive shaft will have no play in it.

It's generally not necessary to confirm that you are fully engaged in park as long as all of the other positions are set correctly, so an easier method is to lift just one side of the rear axle case to keep one wheel on the ground and the other slightly lifted. Then you can just try to rotate the one wheel back and forth and confirm that it doesn't rotate. However, with this test you will always have a bit of play because of the differential assembly.

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Are you using the lever on the steering column or the lever on the side of the transmission to change positions?
With the pan off you should be able to see the parking gear lever engage with the gear to indicate you are in park.

Thank you for responding. I just used the outer control; lever to eliminate any slack in the linkage. It turned to be a simple fix. As PGH suggested, with the wheels off the ground it is easy to confirm if the transmission is in park or not.

Happy

Thank you for your response and comments. It turned out to be another case of finding the wrong way first. The fix was actually very simple. I had installed the manual control spool upside down. Turning it, 90 degrees allowed full travel into park. drive shaft locked in place. Now my next challenge will be to see if I can get the linkage adjusted so that the pointer is close to where it is supposed to be.
Old and slow but still Happy.

Once you get all the gears selecting properly no matter what the indicator says then look at the indicator needle. Some of the early 55s had issues with the needle working loose in the original clamp and if your car never got the new parts that could be part of the wrong indication issue.

Here is the article plus photos of the old and new indicator fastening methods that other have posted over the years

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Adjusting the needle is extremely simple, when you have whatever gear selected aside from park or reverse, you will have some slop in the linkage. Simply adjust the linkage so that the play in the needle is centered around the desired gear.

You should also confirm that the reverse lights do not light up when you have low selected and are pulling gently down on the gear shift lever such that the needle is deflected to the right of low.

If the transmission is extremely difficult to get out of park or if this adjustment seems impossible, then you probably have the wrong combination of the outer lever arm and the little linkage piece that connects directly to it. There were I think three sets of those... Two types for 55 and then they changed it again for 56.

Another note is even with the correct part sometimes it can be a little hard to shift out of park. If so, just tweak the adjustment so you have better leverage by the firewall. I believe adjusting in this direction would be to move the indicator a little to the right but don't quote me on it. This is the relevance of Howard's post... If you need to make this adjustment to make it easy to shift out of Park, and all of the stops in the steering column align properly with the gears, but the only problem is that the needle is a little off, then you can either bend the needle slightly or buy the adjustable one. I have a spare adjustable one lying around.