Also, unless it is a stuck kickdown switch, the need to stop and cycle through park and reverse to get your tranny to shift out of first is also an indicator of low transmission fluid. Check your level and see if it helps.

As far as the bowden cable goes. What it does is adjust the shifting point on the transmission, relative to the physical location of the throttle. So basically, if you are deep in the pedal accelerating, it won't shift until much later since it assumes you are accelerating hard. The shorter the cable (effected by unscrewing the white adjustment nut, like the brake adjustment on your bicycle) the farther out of the pedal you'll have to be before the transmission wants to shift. This gets further complicated by the vacuum supply adjustment and trasmission vacuum modulator pressure adjustment. Once you understand the system you can tune it for your preference and to make up for wear in the system.

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'79 300D, Ivory "Gunther" ......going
'81 300SD, Metallic Blue Silver, The Grey Ghost.....going
'87 300D Turbo ...gone
'05 CDI.... gone