Tiptronic Boxster Won't Go Into Park - Cable seems fine

[mrk]

Hi all, I am a new owner of a 1997 Boxster automatic with tiptronic (95000km/60K miles) and a new member of the forum.

I am hoping someone can help with a problem I am having. The car will not shift into park. I am able to force the shift lever into the park position (with a fair amount of force) but the instrument display shows it being in reverse. The instrument display does show the correct gear for D, R and N.

I had a mechanic friend look at the problem. He disconnected the shift cable from the lever at the rear of the car and we pressed on the rear lever to change gears but were still unable to make it shift into P. The cable seems to be ok, and the shift knob in the cabin moves freely through all gears including park with the cable disconnected from the rear.

Another thing to add is that I did have a previous instance a couple of months ago where the car was stuck in Park and wouldn't shift into gear. I finally gave up and left it alone for a while and it somehow worked several hours later. The transmission seems to shift just fine while driving so I think the problem is something related to the 'park' mechanism only.

The info that I have read online seems to suggest that the next thing to check would be the multifunction switch located on the left side of the tranny, but my repair manual says you need to remove the transmission lower cover, catalytic converter, suspension, etc to get at the multifunction switch. Has anyone had to replace one and is there an easy way to test it before going through all that work?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!