Moko

It was the triangular plastic part that wasn’t quite in the right place it just needed a bit of force with the gear lever and it then sat right and went into D.

If anything it’s all a bit smoother than before I took it all apart...so been for a test drive and reverse lights and sensors are all working fine now so I’m now very happy.

laalves

For future memory, I had the same issue as others: intermittent or absent reverse lights and mirror movement. Park assistant worked though.

I bought this car in 2008 with 80,000km and put another 100000km on top of that so I figured I might as well replace the switch anyway, as these symptoms have been manifesting themselves more and more for 2 years now.

Recommendations:
Put the key in, put the car in neutral and take the minus pole off the battery.
When you remove the gate, take a photo of the dust cover (sort of plastic triangle with a spring underneath) so that you know how to put it back on the gearstick. When you access the switch, ensure the car is in neutral and if you are going to reuse the switch, put a nail or drill bit in the hole on the side so that the internal plastic selector piece is locked in neutral when you remove it. The new ones come with a pin pre-installed.
The plugs are rather difficult to take out and unfortunately, the lower one blocks access to the lower screw, so you need to take the lower plug out before you can remove the screw. Use two fine and very small flat screwdrivers (2in long or so) to insert on each side of the plugs, starting with the one above, to unlock the tabs. Then firmly, but gently pull the plugs out. I used flat nose pliers to grab and pull the plugs, whilst I had the small screwdrivers in.
Don't forget to remove the drill bit/nail once you put the switch back on.
To take the centre console out, you either have to recline the right seat fully or, if like me, you have bucket seats, you have the choice of taking the right seat out of the car or remove the lower cubby hole/CD drawers console. I chose the latter but it is still difficult.

curtis_clt

Hi all, I followed these instructions and they worked great for getting the console out and getting to the switch. I did everything as described and put the switch back in to test it, but alas, no reverse lights. Luckily I had not put my console back together yet so I took out the switch again and I noticed that the two long copper strips had an area for contact that gets pushed together when the gear selector goes into reverse. Those contacts were heavily oxidated, so I cleaned them up so they were shiny again. Reinstalled the reverse light switch and everything was back in working order! So, just another step to do after you get the switch out to cover all the bases. Here are two pics that show a) the contacts that need to come together and b) how the gear selector pushes them together when you move it into 'R'