Sometimes strange and unexpected things happen.

I was out running some errands in my 245FTi, and it became very difficult to shift gears. As I came up to a stop sign, the trannie did go into neutral okay, and then went into 1st gear okay. When I went for 2nd gear: nothing....

I rolled off the street into a parking lot. The shifter was flopping around like it was not hooked up to anything. I pulled the shifter boot up to take a look see. What I saw was not good. The shifter link rod was hanging off to the side, broken.

Once I got the wagon to where I could get underneath to see just what had happened, and to determine my options, I was able to remove the broken link rod.

Well, I could drop the 3in exhaust, drop the crossmember, and pull the trannie...just to get to the shifter pivot.

OR, I could do it the hard way: tunnel in.

...I decided to do some tunnel work.