Neutral safety switch - Shifting issues - unable to start

Hello, I'm new here, and a bit desperate to get my 4runner out of my garage.
I have been having issues shifting out of park, there was a lot of resistance. Recently a check engine light came on, checked it out and it came back as a P0705. This lead me to replace the Transmission Neutral Safety Switch. It was really stuck on there and I couldn't find a lot on youtube about it.
In the process i removed the shifter cable from the transmission. I was trying to remove the lower bolt to, hopefully, give me some wiggle room on the Neutral safety switch side. As i was attempting to remove this bolt i felt the transmission switch out of gear. At least that's my best guess. I believe the transmission was in park at this time.
I finally installed the neutral safety switch but now I can't get my 4runner into park without a huge resistance, and when I do It wont start and is stuck in my garage. It feels spring loaded and will SHOOT back to Neutral or drive.

* I took the center console out and confirmed that the Shifter cable is connected to the shifter its self. I did not see anything alarming while i had that opened.

** The picture below identifies the bolt i was trying to loosen and what I believe caused my current problem.

Thanks!

06 SR5 4.0 V6 4wd 161,000 miles

 

That's a nut not a bolt, that being said, why were you removing the nut?
It just holds the shift lever on the shift shaft, if you remove that nut and took the lever off the shaft and the shaft moved, i.e. out of park and then put the lever back on, maybe you have the lever in the wrong position on the shaft and it's binding up, not sure if that possible but if it is it could be the issue.

If the lever is in the proper position on the shift shaft, it could be binding from the rust where the shift cable attaches to the shift lever, that cable attachment point has to pivot when shifting gears, you might try lubricating the attachment point so it.

Recently another member here had his shifter becoming hard to shift, he lubricated that pivot/attachment point and it freed up his hard shifting issue.

Here's link to his topic about his issue.
https://www.4runners.com/threads/gear-selector-moves-stiffly-not-registering-on-dash.29023/

 

Thanks for your response!
I never took it off. At the time i thought i could take it off to slide the shaft it is attached over to the other side to give me more room on the Neutral safety switch side to help me remove the safety switch. It was incredibly stuck.
I will try removing the shifter cable and repositioning the lever and lubricate it.

Thanks again!

 

As rusty as it is I wouldn't try to remove either point on that lever, it's very possible something might break!!!
If you didn't remove that nut then it's on the shaft correctly, just try to lube the cable end attachment point with it still attached, watch the video in the post I linked!!!

 

For clarification i never took off the bottom nut of the lever arm but I did have the shifter cable off a few times.
After watching the video I tried lubricating the lever and the cable.
I can force it into Park but it SPRINGS back to neutral as soon as i touch it. Found this forum post and used some of the diagnostics from the 5th post down. https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/shift-lever-is-stiff-and-difficult-to-move-at-times.363688/
Im wondering if it is the Neutral safety switch and the PRNDL switch are one in the same.
I removed the shifter cable from the lever arm, and I was able to move the shifter in the cab without any issues. BUT I was unable to move the lever arm freely. I was able to move it a little but not much, I think just reverse and neutral. I lubricated everything, shifter cable, lever arm and tried working it without any luck.
I appreciate all of your help so far!

 

That was me in the topic above that had posted that video. Yeah, all I had to do was lubricate mine and a few days later it's still working like butter.

I lucked out with mine that it was only stiff from lack of lubrication, I was worried that it was the neutral safety switch too, because in my research I had seen that mentioned a few times.

Good luck figuring it out!

 

Thanks I appreciate it! Glad it was a quick fix for you!

 

Long delay on an update here.

So eventually I had to get a tow truck to tow the 4runner out of my garage. The battery was dead and they jumped it. Im honestly not sure what they did but they got it into gear.
Got it to a trans shop. They said that i must have moved a lever past the sprung steel internally (not really sure what that means) but they opened it up and fixed that issue.
It now goes into drive, the shifter is very tight and hard to move but i can shift into the gears. THE NEW ISSUE haha is that there is a significant delay when shifting into Drive. 99% of the time im
shifting from park to drive, but it does this from any other gear. there is about a 3-7 second delay and then the car will lurch into gear.

I talked to the trans shop and they dont know what could be causing that. I took it to another shop for a second opinion and they think there is an internal hydraulic leak, but they dont know for sure
without tearing it apart. First shop quoted me $4k for a new used trans, and the second shop said $4k for a rebuild with no promise that they could in-fact fix it.

Still searching for any help or advice, thanks!