transmission lock?

[dirkbalter]

Hello everybody,
My neighbor from down the street has a 230 sl automatic. He has the car for 20+ years but hasn’t driven it for a couple of years. Whenever he needs access to his garage he would manually push it out and back in. Most recently, after pushing it out in the driveway he wasn’t able to push it back in. He believed (his wife) engaged the parking brake to hard and locked the rear brakes. I tried to help him and we found that the parking brake is fine. We jacked up the car and found that each wheel is moving freely individually, ruling out the brake suspicion. With the wheels, back on the ground we cannot push the car. It feels like the transmission is in gear.  We moved the shifter in all kinds of position and back into neutral without success. Before I start best guessing:
What do you think is the problem? Why can’t the car be pushed like before?
BTW, the car is not running at the moment due to fuel pump issues.
As always, your help is much appreciated,
Dirk

[ja17]

How about the front brakes being locked on?,

[WRe]

Hi,
I would jack all wheels and check if they are free.
Another candidate is the shift lever and a disconnected bushing. The automatic gearbox is no longer in N position.
...WRe

[dirkbalter]

Thank you for the response.
I checked the front brakes as well, the wheels rotate free.
I am not too familiar with the automatic transmission (yet).  Following WRe’s suggestion and reading up on the threads related, that’s probably the first to inspect.
Dirk     

[WRe]

Hi,
in the Technical Manual you find some infomation: https://www.sl113.org/wiki/TransmissionClutch/Shifter.
There you find a picture showing where the shift gate connects to the shift linkage. There is a round plastic shift bushing that could be damaged or lost.
...WRe

[dirkbalter]

Wre, thanks again.
I will go over tomorrow again, jack it up and assuming visible, take a look at the linkage. 
Dirk