Art,
Thanks for the pointer. I knew I saw photos of the innards somewhere, but I was thinking it was Dave Barton or Dave Shannon. You're site's bookmark misleads me by being titled "heater blower repair"

Anyway, cleaning was ultimately fruitless. I expelled approx. three cans of brake cleaner and used my toothbrush to clean around that solenoid. Regardless, I found a bunch of grit hiding behind the solenoid "tower."

I ran the engine with the solenoid off to blow out the grit out with some tranny fluid. Pretty messy but effective.

Anyway, the rubber cap was wasted and the wiring heat shield insulation was fragmentary. The connector was green and the end came off the shifter end of the wiring.

I used my dremmel tool to grind the appropriate channel in the solenoid (really easy!), removed the wiring and capped the tower. I left the big O-ring but removed the smaller one.

Once I got it all buttoned back up (and still on jacks) I ran the car and ran it up to about 85mph. Reaching the higher speed, the tachometer dropped back down to 2k rpms and stayed near there upon further acceleration. I figure the tach was so low at high speeds due to the lack of friction with the road.

I'm fairly sure the OD/4th gear engaged properly. I'll give it a road test later today.

Thanks for the advice! I'm a big fan of the "fix-it-yourself" approach - and I just saved at least $40. If there was more space and one of the tiny little wires had not broken on the tower, I would have tried to repair it.

Thanks all!