When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
This may be the dumb question of the week, but enquiring minds want to know.
I always believed that my 73 auto neutral safety/reverse light switch was defective because it would only start in park and not neutral. Now that my switch is really going bad, I had a look at what makes it tick and don’t believe it was designed to work in neutral. Am I missing something?
Yes It's designed to work in both park and neutral. Failure to work in neutral means you won't be able to start the car while rolling down the road. Say it stalls out while driving, to re-start the car you would have to come to a complete stop. throw it in park and re-start the engine. Starting in neutral allows you to still be moving down the road while re-starting the engine. Much safer.
Interesting. I’ll try to post a pic of the shuttle inside the switch but it isn’t obvious to me how it would depress the contact in the neutral position.
And yes, I get that it would make sense that it should work in neutral, but the General has surprised me more than once.
Someone bypassed the switch in my 73 years before I bought it.
when I installed the 200-4R trans I took it apart and repaired it. Yes it should start in “N” as well as “P”
I had Manual for like 38 years and did not have clutch-interlock hooked up from when I bought it.. Wasn't a big deal to me since I grew up with old cars that did not have the interlock for Manuals.
When I put in the 200-4R I recognized that I would need to hook this up. I located the leads where I had stashed them and hooked them up to the Auto Shifter that bought on flea-bay. The contact assembly was a bit grungy when I got it, but I cleaned it up well and put in some dielectric grease..... I was ok with buying a new one but I figured I'd try to get mine to work.....and HOLY COW! It works just fine and the car only starts in Park and in Neutral.
You might try just cleaning and using some dielectric grease in there. Can't really hurt. I'll see if I can find a picture of how rough it looked....
OK, found some pics. If yours isn't as bad as this you can hopefully getting it buffed up.
Originally Posted by redwingvette
Someone bypassed the switch in my 73 years before I bought it.
when I installed the 200-4R trans I took it apart and repaired it. Yes it should start in “N” as well as “P”
Automatic neutral safety switch - is it really?
