At the top of your transmission is a shaft that is operated by a cam device of sorts, which in turn is drive by the shift cable. It's also where the selector switch is that lights up the P/N/D/R on your dash and allows for start / no-start depending upon whether you're in P/N or something else.
Not at all uncommon for the shaft that goes down into the tranny to seize.

Really old thread here >> http://www.hyundai-forums.com/cm-2007-2012-santa-fe/335114-shifter-gear-select-hard-move.html covered this well, and there are one or two other minor threads on the same topic.

 

I'm not too familiar with the terminology for the parts but I think which part you are talking about as mine looks all rusted. I attached some pictures (3 pages). I went through the thread you referred to and my car symptoms are similar if not exact. I prefer to do this myself since the car wont shift in R/D and I dont want to get it towed for a simple fix.

Area A is where i believe the selector shaft is ? If so it does look pretty rusted. I used this to align the hole back to neutral position. If I have to remove it and clean it I'm not sure how to do that.
Area B is the linkage that stretches when i manually change the gear. Do I have to disconnect this too at some point ?
Area C on page 3 is the pin i was talking about once disconnected the shifter moves with no problems.

It has been raining in the Northeast of cloudy/damp for a week so the condition of the switch looks worse than usual.

Edit: Forgot to mention the car has 140k miles

 

+I have an O7, 3.3 so I don't know if it is much different. Are you disconnecting the cable at the console or the transaxle ? On mine, the cable is held with a nut on a stud on the bellcrank. that shifts the transaxle and the range (inhibitor) switch that is on the teansaxle shifter shaft. I don't know where you live but i am in the rust belt. When I went to replace the range switch everything was badly rusted, the nut on the range switch, the nut holding the cable, the stud on the bellcrank that should rotate to accomodate the changing angle. Take out the battery tray, Take it apart and see what is stuck. I used all kinds of rust busters and i had my heart in my mouth when I took that trasaxle nut off. If that shaft had broken I would have been in deep trouble. When you got hung up couldn't release the shifter with overide release on the,console? Our resident expert, Canderson will probably have some good advice as soon as he sees your post. If you do take it apart, I would change the range switch anyway as they don't last forever. If you have everything off the transaxle, make sure you know where neutral is on the shaft. Mine shifted all over the place as I struggled with the nut.

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Area A is where i believe the selector shaft is ? If so it does look pretty rusted. I used this to align the hole back to neutral position. If I have to remove it and clean it I'm not sure how to do that. Correct. It's that nut on top that shaft that you'll have to remove to get the range selector switch & etc out from under so you can see how the shaft looks going into the tranny. Having seen that, you'll probably be ready for your favorite can of nut buster juice. Actually, you'll probably need that just to get the nut off cleanly. Might be able to avoid new parts depending upon condition of shaft below.

Area B is the linkage that stretches when i manually change the gear. Do I have to disconnect this too at some point ? No surprise that it is 'stretching' -- it is having a bugger of a time turning the lever between B and A that spins the shaft going into the tranny. I can't recall if you have to remove "B" to get the lever off .. but as soon as you get the nut off at "A", you'll know right away. Haven't had one of these in over a year, and nowhere near a manual at this weekend.

 

This is just like mine. Remove nuts A and B. Remove the shift cable that is undoubtedly rusted on. Remove the plate that is held down by nut B. Also probably rusted to shaft. The screw that nut A was on should rotate in the plate. It undoubtedly does not. When removing nut B, If the car is in neutral, note that the flats on the tranny shaft are close to parallel to the sides of the car. That is putting the tranny in neutral. If it turns when removing nut B you will need to know where tranny neutral is. At this point you can unplug the range switch and remove the two mounting sctews. After cleaning/ replacing and freeing up frozen parts. Put shifter in neutral,Tighten A and B nuts but leave range switch screws loose. Find a 5mm or 3/16" drill bit See the arm on the plate with the little hole in it. There is a hole in the range switch. Rotate the range switch until the back of the drill bit will align the hole in the arm with the hole in the switch. Tighten the 2 range switch mounting screws. The shifter and tranny must be in neutral through this procedure.


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Thanks for the good info! As you mentioned before busting that nut on the shaft has me worried as well. I dont want to break something but I will give it a go after I use some PB blaster and leave it over night. Will update thread once I have made some progress !

 

I was able to get all the parts off it wasn't too bad after i let the PB blaster soak in for few days. Cleaned all the parts as best i could and put everything back together and the shifter is still a little hard but order of magnitude easier than before. I'm able to drive the car around. Attached is image of what the shaft looked like and the inhibitor switch after i took them off.

I did notice the nut did not easily rotate on to the shaft so bad threads could be causing remainder of the "stiffness". Is it possible to take that shaft out to clean it up ?

I will try to get a new nut and washer see how they sit on the shaft if the threads on the shaft are the issue what can I do ?

Thanks for all the great advice/help so far !

 

Have seen prettier, that's for sure.
Shaft can be removed .. and replaced, if needed, but not quick and easy access. Good news is that repeated treatment with favorite nut buster juice has kept us out of that ditch so far.

 

I ended up getting a new inhibitor switch (OEM) and that fixed the issue! Just remember when you installed everything back to align bolt B to original position. Attached is a procedure I found which helped a lot.

I didn't stretch the linkage enough and tightened everything up. This resulted in the gear not registered P and D but shifter had no issues moving back and fourth. I had to play around with the alignment a bit and now everything registers. However I caused another issue since I had to test if everything was working properly I had to remove the battery in and out probably 5 times and this made the positive connection loose so be careful.

Thanks for all the help folks !