Starting to sound that way to me.
Does the shifter lift up and down a quarter inch or so without spring
pressure involved ?
It shouldn't .
Are there wear marks on the bottom of the shift box where the shifter has
been rubbing. There shouldn't'' be. 
Nothing looked out of place in the white plastic pieces area right at the
shift pivot ? 
I suspect parts in there are broken, and it's hanging low, and that's why
the reverse lock out isn't coming into play.
 I just ordered some parts for a shifter I'm going to work on. It's one of
those things I do so seldomly that I don't remember how it exactly works.  I
hope I find time to rebuild this one with the parts I have  soon. Working on
too many vanagons at once.
Scott
www.turbovans.com 

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Allan Streib
Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2008 10:02 AM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: continuing shifter problems

Spent some time yesterday trying to improve the shifting on my '91
GL.  I removed the shifter "box" underneath, cleaned all the old hard
grease out and regreased the 3/4 "gate" and the reverse lockout "fence".

Followed the Bentley procedure to align the shifter -- strangely,
they say that by '91 the upper bearing plate should no longer have
the alignment holes, but mine did.  The lower plate did NOT have
alignment holes, so I just followed the procedure as if I did not
have the alignment holes.

The shifting all works fairly well now, but the whole shifter
mechanism is sitting too "low" in the box.  It will pop over the
reverse lockout with no real downward pressure on the shifter.  If I
lift UP on the shifter the reverse lockout works properly.

So I guess it sounds like I just have a worn-out shift lever bearing
and I need to get the rebuild kit?

Allan
--
1991 Vanagon GL