KTI Off Road

Recently our Cherokee (XJ) started to develop problem with back up lights – they worked erratically, then stopped to work at all. Two months later problems with starting showed up – sometimes I had to move the lever to N position to make starter working. Diagnose: dying neutral safety switch. Pretty common problem for AW4 transmissions – both mounted in Jeep as well as those in Volvo. Fortunately most of the time you can easily fix it without spending $200 on new one or scarifying backup light feature or having to start your car in N position.

When you crawl beneath your Jeep on the passenger side you will see something like this:

Not a pretty look uh? Now using 12 mm wrench unbolt the upper locking bolt. Then using flat screw driver straighten out locking tabs and unbolt (should be hand tight only) the bigger (lower) one. Then carefully pry off the locking washer, disconnect plug (located in the engine compartment next to the transmission oil level dip stick) and take the whole thing out.

First clean it out a little bit

unscrew six bolts holding the cover

and carefully pry it off. The whole switch is assembled from three parts. Cover:

moving finger and metal body:

Now clean very carefully all finger parts (springs, copper tabs and finger itself). As you may see on those pictures in my case it was covered in dried out grease blocking it from moving:

Here is how it should look like

Now lets go to the most important part. In the plastic cover there are some copper slide rails on which the tabs in finger goes. As you may see here they are very worn out in the reverse area:

Lucky us – it’s not that hard to fix. All you need is some 600 grit water sand paper and piece of flat surface. I used some 1/4″ steel plate lying around in the garage. Mount it in the vise and water it a little bit.

Then file the switch cover

till everything is even and shiny

Now using a little bit of dielectric grease put it all back together.

Some small hints for the installation – using fish wire helps a lot with pulling wires back to the engine compartment.

After checking switch operation lock it in place with locking bolt, finger tighten the bigger nut and lock it in place with washer tabs. Here is how it should look like at the end:

Whole thing took less than 4h and required 12 mm wrench plus flat and philips screw driver – nice and easy way to save some $200

Technorati Tags: Cherokee, XJ, back up lights, neutral safety switch, AW4, Jeep, Volvo