I've had a problem over the past couple of weeks with my shifter on my 97 A4 not wanting to stick in gears. It wasn't as "notchy" as I remembered it being, and it wouldn't go into park; it would just stay in neutral and roll. It also couldn't decide wether it wanted to be in neutral or reverse.

My brother and I got the car up on ramps and used Shoebox's tranny cable adjustment guide to see if the cable was out of whack. We did the adjustments and it was still slipping around. When we took a look under a second time, we noticed that there was a bracket that kept the cable assembly hooked up to the transmission, and this bracket was missing a bolt, and the other one was already partially undone!

Tightening the bracket back down, even with just the one bolt, resulted in the nice, firm shifter I remembered. Had we not caught these bolts, I have a feeling that my car might not be moving at all! Before you go through the trouble adjusting your shifter cable, check these bolts and tighten them down.