What is the reason for reverse lockout? I recently installe a Hurst shifter and I followed everything, marking the cables. The shifter works perfectly. The other day, I thought I
would shift in reverse without the lockout. It went into reverse perfectly. I have been doing that ever since, so why reverse lockout?

 

The adjustment of the cables is probably off by a little bit. It won't hurt your car. But you could adjust the cables so you can use the reverse lock out. Its all personal preference.

Unless the shifter is flawed which is probably not, because I havn't heard of a flawed hurst.

 

So some ******* friend doesn't try to make your car a 6 speed and throw it into reverse at 120 mph, lol.

 

that, my friend, would be reason for pulling over at the nearest bridge and disposing of this 'friend'.

 

 

It would also (According to Jeff Foxworthy) cure constipation!

 

Yeah, i think its good practice to have the reverse lockout working. You need to adjust the lateral cable (the one with the white plastic clip on it)

 

The reverse lockout is a SAAB inspired trait from the early days aimed at stopping people form doing a few things to the car.

1. Stealing it without the key -- Cant start it,Cant shift it, cant drive it
2. To keep people from knocking the car out of gear when parked as a safety feature.


On most SAAB's they get disabled by the owners becuase its kind of a pain sometimes.

 

Wait... huh?

I can shift out of reverse without my keys.....

 

Me too

 

i never noticed that you couldn't shift out of reverse without keys... i gotta try that... hah

 

I think he is thinking of another lockout system
this one is solely to stop you from going into reverse while in forward motion

 

No this system was derived from the same saab system but it sound like they took the security feature out of it in the Cobalt system and just left the lockout in forward motion piece. Since the cobalt uses the same trans as the 9-5 does that makes sense.

 

I didnt think it was just a saab system, i thought it was Getrag. I could be wrong. you own the saab and i have seen that in saabs forever.

I have also seen the lockouts in the focus as well which is also equiped with the getrag transmission. also, all the cavaliers with the isuzu trans did not have a reverse lock out, but the later model cavaliers and sunfires that had the getrag transmission had the reverse lockout.

 

You are correct sir. But and like I said since the Cobalt, ION and SAAB allshare the Epsilon platform and powertrain it makes total sense. On the older SAAB's you have to push the shifter down to use reverse and as always it will not go into reverse while in forward motion. Plus SAAB uses a BAR lock on the shifter itself that ties to the key so if you dont have it in reverse you cant take the key out.


But it dawned on me that on the Chevy the key is in the dash where mine is in the center console so the security piece would not carry over to the Cobalt.


Sorry to muck up the thread...