brandonvalentine
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- Nashville, TN
From the how-the-heck-am-I-going-to-get-home department comes this ninja move:
Let's say you're out somewhere and your notoriously finicky NSS has finally gone to Jeep heaven. No amount of jiggling the shifter or moving back and forth between Park and Neutral will get her started. You know, because you've been sitting there freezing your ass off trying for a good 30 minutes now. You know you should have replaced the thing last week but you just didn't have time. How do you get home or at least to a place where you can safely lift the Jeep and do the repair?
Look on the rear passenger side of the engine for the 8-wire harness coming from the neutral safety switch. There are two wires in this harness, pins B and C on the plug (two center pins opposite the clip that holds the harness together, look in a shop manual for a diagram, they are labeled on the plug in my Jeep), which control current to the starter relay. When the NSS is in park or neutral pins B and C are shorted and the circuit through the starter relay is grounded, allowing the starter to crank. What you need to do is ground this circuit yourself. Find yourself a paper clip, or in my case, a safety pin. Cut the head off of the safety pin and wedge it down the back of the engine side of the NSS harness plug between pins B and C, as far in as it will go. Voila, your Jeep will now start in any gear. DON'T START IT ANY OTHER GEAR THAN P or N!
Drive it home, and immediately order yourself a new NSS off of eBay where they're way cheaper than the dealer or auto parts store, and hurry up and get that safety pin out of your wiring harness!
Let's say you're out somewhere and your notoriously finicky NSS has finally gone to Jeep heaven. No amount of jiggling the shifter or moving back and forth between Park and Neutral will get her started. You know, because you've been sitting there freezing your ass off trying for a good 30 minutes now. You know you should have replaced the thing last week but you just didn't have time. How do you get home or at least to a place where you can safely lift the Jeep and do the repair?
Look on the rear passenger side of the engine for the 8-wire harness coming from the neutral safety switch. There are two wires in this harness, pins B and C on the plug (two center pins opposite the clip that holds the harness together, look in a shop manual for a diagram, they are labeled on the plug in my Jeep), which control current to the starter relay. When the NSS is in park or neutral pins B and C are shorted and the circuit through the starter relay is grounded, allowing the starter to crank. What you need to do is ground this circuit yourself. Find yourself a paper clip, or in my case, a safety pin. Cut the head off of the safety pin and wedge it down the back of the engine side of the NSS harness plug between pins B and C, as far in as it will go. Voila, your Jeep will now start in any gear. DON'T START IT ANY OTHER GEAR THAN P or N!
Drive it home, and immediately order yourself a new NSS off of eBay where they're way cheaper than the dealer or auto parts store, and hurry up and get that safety pin out of your wiring harness!