To clarify, park works and locks everything in place, any other selection I can roll the car back and forth by pushing it. When I select a gear while the car is running, I have no drive at all in 1, 2, D or R. It just revs freely any gear. It is also not an AW71L, just and AW70.
I removed the oil pan and verified that the rooster comb thing is in place correctly, by comparing it to the old transmission I just removed. There is no way I could use the selector to shift into any gear if that was wrong from what I can tell.
The new theory is this:
When I first did the +t and I was mating the original AW70 with the engine and did not align the torque converter correctly, having to rattle the two together, violently. *Cringe* As a result, I found that I had completely cracked the trans oil pump, destroyed the spline on the input shaft on the transmission, and couldn't turn the engine oflver as the flywheel was essentially locked in place.
I then replaced the AW70 and torque converter with an AW70 given to me, and all was great until that trans died after 6 months or so.
I then obtain the AW71 (no torque converter came with it) and think "hey, I'll use the original torque converter that used to be in it, as I know it was all good and must be better than the converter currently in the car," I didn't even THINK to check the spline inside the converter, I forgot all about that bit. Fast forward 3 hours the replacement AW71 and original torque converter is in the car, filled her up, no drive at all.
This didn't occur to me until I had a moment of clarity, ice cold beer in hand, covered with trans oil after fishing around under the car for another 4 hours.
This is only a theory, but it makes sense. If the spline is stripped on the input shaft on the AW70 with the cracked oil pump, it'd be the same on that torque converter that's now in the car. It spins freely, but won't pump oil into the converter.
TLDR; it's possible that the torque converter I decided to use instead of the one with trans I just pulled has stripped splines after incorrect installation that I had forgotten about.