Thanks I’ll give it a trySounds to me that your linkage is misadjusted. If everything is original factory, then you'll likely need to do a bit of adjusting. If you keep slamming stuff, you're going to end up damaging something.
Ensure your car is stable, and safe to get under the car. If it's on a lift, even better.
Check your upper bushing, your cross shaft bushing to the frame, and your two transmission linkage bushings where the cross-shaft bend goes into the slots to operate it. If missing or deteriorated/damaged, you'll need to fix that to keep things from being loose and sloppy.
Make the adjustments in NEUTRAL to the shift linkage. Loosen the shift linkage rod going from the column down to the cross shaft. There's a bolt holding a slider on the end of the rod. Just loosen it, don't remove it. Manually place the transmission link on the transmission in neutral. Then make sure the shift lever is in neutral. Then tighten the slider adjustment bolt. The shift linkage rod adjustment bolt is torqued to 28nM per tech manual. (20 lbs-ft). Then using the shift lever, run it through the gears. If it's still hose up, then it may be something is bent or loose.
Here's some info from another thread that may help.
transmission linkage adjustment
I have a 87 olds cutlass supreme with a transplanted bop th350 transmission. I'm having a problem with finding drive are reverse without moving the column shifter up and down searching for it. not sure of the car original transmission, it can with a v6. will the 350 and 200 transmission swap...gbodyforum.com
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