Hard shifting out of Park to Reverse

[jm3a01Camry]

Hello Toyota Nation! First time poster, long time reader. I'm the proud original owner of a 2001 Camry LE 2.2L Automatic. I recently had a brain fart (they get more frequent as time goes by). As I was taking an off-ramp, I went to downshift into 2nd from Drive, and for some reason, my hand went into the other direction, and I selected reverse (yes, the gear shift button was selected, force of habit?). The car stalled, and I paniced, and tried to go into park...I was still decelerating, so the park doohicky slapped around a bit until I realized that I need to come to a complete halt. I swear I am not a drug user. The car seems to be working fine, with the exception of difficulty shifting out of park (to reverse or anything else). It seems to require more force on occasion, depending on how the gear is sitting perhaps?

I have 2 questions:
1) Does the 2001 Camry have smart logic to prevent damage to the tranny/engine. Some sort of rev limiter when engaging reverse to prevent idiots like me from causing harm? I've called the Toyota dealer and get mixed answers.

2) Tranny Fluid is clean, even after 60K miles without a change, but I will still drop it. What could be causing the harshness of the shifter?

Thanks!

[davemac2]

Are you sure you're not on drugs?!

You may have bent up your manual shifting cam on the valve body that your shifter cable is attached to, and this is now causing the difficult shifter movement? I assume that's what you mean by shift hardness and not the 1-2 or 2-3 shifts in the trans. By going to park while driving, I assume what happened was that the parking cam that engages one of the gears was jumping in and out. That may have damaged or bent the shifter shaft in the valve body.

I have not heard of anything which could limit engine rev caused by the trans driving the engine due to a bad manual down shift or reverse/park shift. The computer could of course prevent the automatic shift down at execesive RPM, but a manual shift? Does this trans have a shifter cable or is it all by wire?

dave mc

[jm3a01Camry]

Dave,
thanks for the reply. The wife could have slipped me some date rape drugs that I wasn't aware of. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Like I said, the engine died immediately after shifting into reverse. I'm not sure if it's cable or electronically controlled. I bought the haynes manual last night. I was going to flush the tranny, because that is the extent of what I could do. If something is hosed inside the tranny, then I am SOL. The car seems to work fine, shifts well when driving, no slipping. Not sure if it's just my imagination with the hard shift...maybe it's always done that...but ever since the throw into reverse while driving, I'm on the lookout for damage. That's why I was looking for someone that is familiar with the transmission/computer logic of this car.