Hey all,
I'm new to the forum, but certainly not to reading it; I've been ghosting around on here using everyone's build threads, how-to guides, and question posts to work my way through restoring my 1998 Sport over the past year or so. My latest affliction, on which I am completely stumped, is my backup lights.
I'm finishing up a tub swap, and while I had the tub off I did a bunch of work on my 32RH, including replacing a leaky shift shaft seal, installing a deeper transmission fluid pan, fixing a busted plastic lever that sits riveted to the bottom of the rooster comb that selects the gears, and replacing the neutral safety switch. I got the taillights all wired up, and the brake lights work fine, so I'm assuming it's not a grounding issue. I also replaced all four bulbs there, so it isn't those either. I read around all the forums I could find and saw suggestions to test the circuit by bypassing the NSS through the two purple striped wires going into the pins on the pigtail, and when I tried that, the backup lights came on.
My neutral safety switch must be at least partially functional, because the Jeep will only start in park and neutral (although the shifter has had an oddly noiseless and smooth operation since I worked on it, and doesn't seem to lock into drive properly when shifting the selector... could this be because of poor adjustment of the shift linkage?). Since there's power to that circuit, I'm assuming that the NSS I installed must either be a bad unit or I installed it incorrectly somehow threading it into the transmission housing (I did verify that it contacted the lever in park and neutral, so I'm unsure how exactly it is messed up).
I snagged a cheapo box wrench and cut it in half to be able to fit it into the area around the NSS, with the front driveshaft unhooked from the axle end and swung out of the way across the transfer case skid; the trouble is, I can not, for the life of me, loosen or tighten that darn switch. I can't recall what exactly I torqued it to when installing it with the tub off (Full access, so much easier), but I definitely didn't he-man it or anything; I thought I'd simply lined it up to contact the exposed metal under the plastic clip on the shift shaft. Would the NSS being under or over torqued cause it not to function properly?
I'm kind of stuck, and unsure what to try next, as the 32rh's design makes it impossible to put a socket onto the switch due to the virtually nonexistent lip above the fluid pan. Is there anything I might try besides replacing the switch, or is that the only possible solution? If I can't get the NSS out, can I bypass the switch for the wiring of only the lights and not the safety feature that keeps the Jeep from starting in gear, perhaps by running a wire between the (BLACK/VIOLET) and (WHITE/VIOLET) wires on the NSS through an auxiliary switch mounted on the dash?
Thanks, and sorry for the mouthful of a first post,
Dylan
I'm new to the forum, but certainly not to reading it; I've been ghosting around on here using everyone's build threads, how-to guides, and question posts to work my way through restoring my 1998 Sport over the past year or so. My latest affliction, on which I am completely stumped, is my backup lights.
I'm finishing up a tub swap, and while I had the tub off I did a bunch of work on my 32RH, including replacing a leaky shift shaft seal, installing a deeper transmission fluid pan, fixing a busted plastic lever that sits riveted to the bottom of the rooster comb that selects the gears, and replacing the neutral safety switch. I got the taillights all wired up, and the brake lights work fine, so I'm assuming it's not a grounding issue. I also replaced all four bulbs there, so it isn't those either. I read around all the forums I could find and saw suggestions to test the circuit by bypassing the NSS through the two purple striped wires going into the pins on the pigtail, and when I tried that, the backup lights came on.
My neutral safety switch must be at least partially functional, because the Jeep will only start in park and neutral (although the shifter has had an oddly noiseless and smooth operation since I worked on it, and doesn't seem to lock into drive properly when shifting the selector... could this be because of poor adjustment of the shift linkage?). Since there's power to that circuit, I'm assuming that the NSS I installed must either be a bad unit or I installed it incorrectly somehow threading it into the transmission housing (I did verify that it contacted the lever in park and neutral, so I'm unsure how exactly it is messed up).
I snagged a cheapo box wrench and cut it in half to be able to fit it into the area around the NSS, with the front driveshaft unhooked from the axle end and swung out of the way across the transfer case skid; the trouble is, I can not, for the life of me, loosen or tighten that darn switch. I can't recall what exactly I torqued it to when installing it with the tub off (Full access, so much easier), but I definitely didn't he-man it or anything; I thought I'd simply lined it up to contact the exposed metal under the plastic clip on the shift shaft. Would the NSS being under or over torqued cause it not to function properly?
I'm kind of stuck, and unsure what to try next, as the 32rh's design makes it impossible to put a socket onto the switch due to the virtually nonexistent lip above the fluid pan. Is there anything I might try besides replacing the switch, or is that the only possible solution? If I can't get the NSS out, can I bypass the switch for the wiring of only the lights and not the safety feature that keeps the Jeep from starting in gear, perhaps by running a wire between the (BLACK/VIOLET) and (WHITE/VIOLET) wires on the NSS through an auxiliary switch mounted on the dash?
Thanks, and sorry for the mouthful of a first post,
Dylan
