My mom has a 99 Cadillac deville with 160,000 miles on it. She called me to day and said it will not go into reverse to get out of the drive way. It will go into drive and go forward. I have not looked at it as I am 2 hrs away but I am going to see her this weekend for Mom's day. I do not know much about these front wheel drive cadies, Is there something like a sensor or maybe the shift cable that is causing this problem. What should I look for? Which trans is it. I know more about GM's RWD than anything else.

I just hate the thought of having to work on FWD, or even worse the thought of replacing the trans

Thanks for helping.

Fluid would be the first thing i 'd check.it's under the air intake tube going to the TB ,pliers work good ,have to twist and pull out counterclock. make sure to push down all the way to properly check.It should be a 4t80e transmission. Also scan it for codes.good luck!

After getting there and looking at it, it really has me stumped now. The fluid is fine, nice and pink not burnt looking. It goes in all drive gears and is not stuck in one gear like if it were in fail safe mode. It just acts like there are 2 nutural gears. I do not have a code reader to read the codes, all my stuff is old enough to not have a computer (other than the company truck which I don't have to work on ).

I loaded it on my trailer and brought it home to my house so I can work on it where all my tools are at. Have not had a chance to dig in to much yet.

the cadillac come with onboard diag in the auto temp controler to acess it press warm and hi wait until all lights in the dash lite up then let off you can go from there by watching the cluster info it navigates like a oil,milage reseter each area that you go into has about 5 functions you need a map to navigate it well i get half way to were i want to go and it kicks me out when i scan them some times a pain, i rec. you to get a book or find sombody with acess to alldata or somthing like that.first find out what the codes are.which gears are missing rev and ? if the fluid is ok it could be a hard part did it make noise or just quit? these things break off solenoids in the lower pan.these cars are finicky when started back up need to relearn through resets in pcm.this can be done at home but read the book for navigations in the pcm the codes will help tell if its real bad before getting into the pan.