This afternoon I was having some fun with my car and I went to shift it from first to 2nd real quick and it went in hard but engaged and when I went to go from 2nd to 3rd nothing. I only have forward and backward movement at the shift lever. I can manually shift the transmission under the hood but I can't get it to shift at the shifter. Is it my shifter? or is it my cables stretched out. It is a 99 chevy cavalier z24. The cables have about 160K on them. When I use the shifter and the tranny is in neutral I can shift it in to gear when i push the shifter foward but I can't get it to come back out of gear with the shifter. Your help is greatly appreciated!

cables are broken or came off of the shifter assembly.

remove the center console and look.

alright. that is what I figured but I wanted to confirm. Just ordered both cables from the dealership. hated to do that but most junk yards don't have the 2.4 cav in them up here. And to know if the cables are gonna last or how they were treated would be questionable.

they might not be broken. at one point i lost mine, and they actually just what im going to say came disconnected. i wouldve looked at them before ordering. the one cable is still good if it goes up and back

I checked and they all the connections where together from what I was looking at. Look like I had some play in the actual center pin in the shifter assembly inside the car

Hey thanks guys! It was a snapped cable. As soon as I pulled it out I could see where it was snapped. Tell ya what it feels weird now with such tight cables. I guess it is time for me to install my short throw shifter now that I have the center console torn out.