My wife's '02 C2 tiptronic has a wierd starting problem.

It sometimes will not start while in "Park". It always starts in neutral.

My local indy mechanic looked it over and thought it was the actual shifter machanism since all of the switches to tell the car it's in "Park" are integrated into the shifter mechanism. A new one went in and same thing. He tried a second one just to be sure he didn't get a bad one out of the box - no change.

It is inconsistent. One day, the car starts fine while in "P", the next day (or sometimes 20 min later after stopping off somewhere) it won't start and you need to put it neutral. Also, if you shift the car from park to drive, back and forth a few times, you can get it to start in Park. Sounds like a switch issue but 2 new switches and it's still not fixed.

Apparently, the car doesn't know it's in "Park" because it starts everytime in "Neutral".

Does anyone have any ideas where to look next?

Thanks!

 

Maybe it is a detent, tab or whatever that triggers the switch is not making good enough contact? I dont know exactly how it works but something mechanical has to trigger the switch I would venture to guess.

 

cable adjustement

 

99firehawk - are you talking about the adjustment at the actual shifter mechanism or down by the tranny (not sure if you can adjust both).

Come to think of it, I just had a tranny mount replaced and this problem started a bit before that.

I wonder if the tranny moved enough to throw the cable out of spec. It seems bit more difficult to shift the car from drive to park - maybe the cable is too tight.

Advice for adjusting? I'm a do it yourself-er and would like to give it a try.

 

trans in park, shifter in park adjust the cable at the trans until it lines up with the shift linkage

 

I'll give it a try...thanks.