I would say that all in all, if there was a rod and bracket link hooked up at all, then hypothetical dingleberry's transmission is okay, sounds like throttle valve linkage weight made it fall back to about 60-80%% engagement if the spring and linkage is set at the transmission properly. Then if wide open and long stud is present on the carb that engages the long slot link of the kickdown apparatus the link would get pushed on back... It's almost like it was engineered to fall back to this point if the spring broke as if it were perceived by the engineers to be a maximum safe low throttle pressure point for the transmission to operate at in case of a return spring failure... I've seen it happen more than once with no more damage than shifting early and only marginally firmer...
