Manual Trans/Back-up Light Switch Problem

[Brock94]

The back-up lights on my 94 XLT, manual transmission, have not worked since I bought it in February. I finally got around to diagnosing the problem and found that the wiring and lights to the switch are fine-- I put a jumper in the switch harness at the transmission and the lights came on. This made me think I had a bad switch, so I went to the parts store and got a new one. After installing the new switch, the lights still don't come on when I shift to reverse. The previous owner told me they recently had a rebuilt tranny installed (and it looks like the tranny was out recently), but they didn't have any paperwork.

I'm thinking that the mechanism in the transmission that activates the switch was not installed properly on the rebuild. Is there any easy way to check this and/or fix it?

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[Doug]

The "mechanism" in the top cover is just a metal bar basically that contacts the switch when the shifter pushes it over when put into reverse. I'd pull out the switch and see if the bar is in there, it's possible it fell out. other than that there isnt really anyway to check it with out taking out the entire transmission.