Took a look into the transmission and it is still the original one from 1999 with a stout metal gear. Everything looked operational. I struggled to refit the transmission the other day and it gave me difficulty removing today, so I took a closer look at the metal studs from the body that it attaches to.
They are canted upward a decent amount, but hard to tell to what degree they should be from factory. I will start working on taking apart the functional passenger side to see if that gives me an idea. And if I come up empty, convert to manual operations, as that is the last idea and conceivable deviation that I can come up with.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J-Na1DyANI