neutral safety switch

My Mits. Gallant decided to die on me a couple of weeks ago. Because of financial straights I picked up a cheap but quite sweet low mileage Nissan Almera (Sentra to you). I've chucked in an alarm, R/S, BlueTooth kit, audio, solenoid trunk release, etc. The point is, after 30 years I'm back to driving a manual transmission. I wired the R/S (Intellistart lV) as an auto but my conscience has been hammering at me! This is what I'm getting at because I don't think the NSS has been given any in depth coverage before. MOST vehicles built since about 98 have a NSS safety switch feeding the engine management. I started the vehicle in gear with the key and I thought "this won't work" but I was able to access the engine management pin outs. There it was and this is how you test: Ignition on, set DMM to continuity, ground one probe,other probe to suspected terminal, continuity should buzz and read 0ohms. Move shifter to any gear, ohms will increase and buzzer will cease. I moved the NSS to that wire from its parking brake position and Eureka it works! Job done. It's not too difficult to check your engine management pin-outs, Mitchells, Autodata here in Europe, the internet local (US) libraries, etc.

thanks allot howie :D very usefull info :)D6-In Car Solutions

where did you access the pins howard? Great info by the way.commit your way to jehovah and he will act in your behalf. psalms 37:5

You MUST have the pin outs for the engine management, having a wiring colour also helps of course but the pin outs will give you a position, then test. As long as you use a DMM rather than a test light, I can't see any "issues" with this method. Obviously to test I sat in the car with one foot hovering over the clutch, the other the brake and a hand over the gearshift.

How'd u manouever that? LOL, nice ride howard, locally it's one of the most popular cars i've done thousands of them, literally, i know every wire by heart in that vehicle for possibly everything you could think about, lol, locally it's also one of the hottest attraction for thieves, extremely high theft rate.commit your way to jehovah and he will act in your behalf. psalms 37:5

The Mits decided to go and die on me, couldn't get it to fire up, nothing at the plugs though the coils were getting power, engine management kaput = £1000 say goodbye Mits. The Almera has a couple of minor scrapes down one side, insurance repairs are so expensive, that although booked at £1350 on 100,000 miles the insurers wrote it off and the owner's son brought it for 400 and sold it to me for 500 50,000 gen. miles, the only fault I can find is the heater motor rheostat, have to change it. 1.4 engine size, it's sooo gutless.

Howie..... another amazing bit of YOUR ability my friend.... Well done !

Sorry to hear of the passing of your Mitz.

What's more, I hope to add a cruise control next week, I'll use that and a relay instead of the joy of mounting a clutch switch.

Darren, sorry I didn't get back earlier, I use Autodata, the coverage is non-existent on US, and poor on Japanese but at least it had the pin-outs and colours. US public libraries are great for US cars and there's always the internet if you have lots of patience, owner's forums are a good source. DEI has nothing on it. Do you remember a few weeks ago someone had one from I think New Zealand and he made a right cook-up of the locking, well it was exactly as I said, a yellow/red wire in the driver side door loom (upper kick panel)and it's a type F , open circuit to lock, ground to unlock. It took about 5 minutes including wiring up a mini relay.

Good to see "fail-safe" design - ie, open to lock. Except that in that case, isn't it a safety issue? Not that I want to cause I big discussion (especially since I'm just browsing through), but I think of electric building locks (that release in the advent of power loss) and the old single-wire ground-switched N.O. oil pressure lamp switches (eg - failed switch or disconnected wire?). Now we have some interesting vehicle practices that IMO are risky - if not inconvenient. (They are not like horses used to be!) PS - I retrospect, I think I just wanted to write "Brilliant Howard!". (Several times.)