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Hi, I'm Mike from 1AAuto. We've been selling auto parts for over 30 years! We're dedicated to delivering quality auto parts, expert customer service, and fast and free shipping, all backed by our 100% satisfaction guarantee. So visit us at 1AAuto.com, your trusted source for quality auto parts.
In this video, we're going to be working with our 2002 Chevy Suburban 5.3 liter V8. We're going to show you how to remove and replace the transmission range sensor, also known as a neutral safety, or reverse switch.
If you like this video, please click subscribe. We have a ton more information on this and many other vehicles, and if you need this part for your car, you can follow the link down in the description over to 1AAuto.com.
Here are the items you'll need for this repair: jack and jack stands, paint pen or marker, side cutters, flat blade screwdriver, pry bar, 11-15mm socket, ratchet, socket extension, locking pliers, pliers, wire brush, torque wrench
Before removing the front bolts on your driveshaft, make sure that your vehicle's transmission is in neutral. Raise and support your vehicle. We're using a lift to make it easier to show you guys what's going on at home, but this job can easily be done in the driveway or your garage with a jack and jack stands.
Your front driveshaft is located here between the front differential and the transfer case flange on the driver's side of the transmission. If you're going to be reinstalling your old driveshaft, you'll need to index it to make sure it goes back in the same way it came out. Do this by drawing a line on the flange and the driveshaft with a paint marker. Cut the clamp on the dust boot with a pair of side cutters. It helps to twist when you're cutting these, and just kind of snap them off. Remove the clamp and peel back the boot. You may need a flat blade screwdriver to help pop the boot off. Once the boot's peeled off, we'll index the yoke to the side of our transfer case housing.
Stick a pry bar in between the forks of the yoke and the driveshaft, and brace it against your torsion bar. You can then loosen the bolts with an 11 millimeter socket ratchet and extension. Move the U joint strap. Rotate your driveshaft 180 degrees and reinstall the pry bar. Remove the remaining two 11 millimeter bolts.
If your driveshaft is rusty like ours is, you may need to use a pry bar to remove the driveshaft from the yoke. Sometimes they will come out by hand. Move it out of the way of the yoke and slide it out of the transfer case.
With the driveshaft out of the way, you can now access your transmission range switch. Disconnect the connectors by lifting up on the tab and releasing them from their sockets. We'll just hang those out of the way for now. Slide a pair of side cutters behind the end of the cable and pop it off. Using a small pair of vice grips, clamp onto the backside of the selector shaft on your transmission and hold the vice grips and use a 15 mm socket ratchet to remove the nut on the end of the selector shaft. You can then remove your vice grips and wiggle the arm off of the selector shaft.
You can now remove the two 13mm bolts securing the switch and plate to the transmission with the 13mm socket and ratchet. Now normally, you should be able to just slide it off of the selector shaft, but ours has a ton of rust build up on it, so we're going to have to pry it off, which is going to break the switch. It's no big deal since we're here to replace it. Remove it from the vehicle.
Here we have the old transmission range sensor that we removed from our vehicle, and our new part from 1AAuto.com. As you can see, these parts are exactly the same with the same backing plate, same sensor body, same two electrical connectors on the backside, and the same dial here which is actually what your selector shaft rotates to tell the switch which position its in. It even comes with a new alignment tool which keeps this in the correct position, so we can bolt it down, there is a little adjustment on the holes here, so it sits in exactly the right place, and then we pop that off and we know that our sensor is calibrated and adjusted correctly.
If your old sensor has broken and is preventing your vehicle from starting when it's in park or neutral, or your reverse lights aren't kicking on when you're in reverse, this part could be at fault, and this new part from 1A Auto will go in direct fit, just like your original equipment and fix you up right.
You can now use a wire brush or a file to remove all of that build up and corrosion from the selector shaft to make sure your new switch goes on smoothly. Once the selector shaft is free of burs and debris, carefully slide the sensor back on. Now that little alignment tool that comes on there will help align these slotted holes, so our sensor sits exactly where we want it to. Once that's in, tighten down two 13mm bolts. Once it's tightened down, simply pop the tool off, re-install your selector lever, which is also keyed, so that'll only go back on one way, as well as the 15mm nut.
This doesn't really require a lot of torque, but should still clamp onto it with your vice grips just to keep it from turning, potentially damaging the switch while you snug it up. Reinstall the cable eyelet. You may want to use a pair of pliers to just carefully pop it on there and make sure it's fully seated, that it doesn't just fall off on you, and re-install your two electrical connectors.
Reinstall the splined-end of your driveshaft into the transfer case. Then set the alignment marks on your driveshaft, and reinstall the strap and the 11 millimeter bolts. Place the pry bar back inside of the yoke and torque the 11 millimeter bolts to 19 foot-pounds. Remove your pry bar and rotate the driveshaft 180 degrees. Your transmission should still be in neutral, and repeat these steps.
Install a new clamp around the boot. The way these ones work is you loop it around and then hook it over, and I'll show you how to crimp it. You get it hooked onto itself like that and then use a pair of side cutters. If you don't have a crimping tool like this, set it over the edges of the crimp and then pinch it down nice and tight. If you're using side cutters, it's important to be careful here and not go too tight, or you'll just cut through it.
Thanks for watching. Visit us at 1AAuto.com for quality auto parts, fast and free shipping, and the best customer service in the industry.
Tools used
Tools used
Now that we've made our way underneath the vehicle, we have a clear view of the neutral safety switch. It's right along the driver's side of the transmission and it has this cable that runs to it. To get started, we're gonna come right above the driveshaft. There's a nut that holds this arm on. We're gonna remove that nut using a 15-millimeter. There it is. See if you can wiggle this off. If you can't wiggle it, just go ahead and grab a pry bar. Okay. Swing that down and out of the way.
The next thing we're gonna do is use a forky tool that looks like this. Come right up along here. There's a little securing point for the wiring harness. Just go ahead and remove that from there. Now we're gonna remove the wiring harness from the actual neutral safety switch itself. You can do that by grabbing the little tabs and then drawing the wiring harness off of it. Of course, take a peek at your connectors. Make sure they're in great condition. If you see any funny colors, you're gonna need to service it. Take this one off, pop that off, take a peek. Looks great. So now all that's left, of course, is to clean down this area, and then we're gonna go ahead and take out the mounting bolts. There's one right here and one located near the electrical connectors.
Next it's time to remove the 13-millimeter mounting bolts, one right here, one over here next to the electrical connectors. Gonna loosen this one as well. Let's grab onto that. You can wiggle it around a little bit. The next thing we need to do is be able to pull it off of this shaft right here that comes out of the transmission. So carefully go in between your transmission pan here and the plastic housing and just try to pry it away. If you wanna use a little bit of penetrant along the shaft, it's probably a great idea. Okay. It's sliding right off. This is great. Get that out of the way. There it is. All right.
So now at this point what you can do is you can take this, slide it back up over that shaft. It should wanna go on there. Now you're gonna use your forky tool, come right in between here and here and we're gonna separate that. Now you can take this and you can go back two clicks. Ready? One, two. That's neutral right there. All right. If you need to double-check it, just go ahead and go back all the way to the front. Park. One's reverse, two's neutral. We'll get this back off of here now. Now we're gonna grab our new neutral safety switch. If you look at it, it's got this on it right here. That's already got it lined up so it knows when it's in neutral. So at this point we're just gonna slide it right over the shaft and the bolt holes should line up exactly where they need to be.
Let's see if I can get this on there. Okay. That slid right on. This is looking good. Right like that. Perfect. We can get our little tool out of there. That came in handy. We've got our two mounting bolts. Go ahead and start them bolt in before you tighten either of them down. Okay. Just make sure they're snug. Perfect. Okay. Just make sure they're snug. Perfect. Now it's time to get our arm back on there. We've got our nut. If you wanna use a little bit of threadlocker, we'll call it your prerogative, but you shouldn't have to.
Okay. Now you're gonna wanna use an 11-millimeter wrench so you can hold this shaft still so it doesn't spin. Hopefully. And now we're gonna tighten that up using our 15-millimeter. Okay. I'm just gonna hold it with a wrench, snug it up. Perfect. Push this all the way back to the front. That's the park position. It should line up perfectly with the cable, and it does. Go ahead and squeeze that together. It clicks right in. Make sure it does not fall out. And if your boot came off, make sure you slide that up. This one looks like it could use a wire tie. It's time to put in these electrical connectors. The bigger one goes on top. Make sure it goes all the way in and clicks. Give it a nice tug. That feels great. Do the other one.
Make sure it locks in. Tug, feels good. We've got our securing area here, anchor point. Slide that in. Beautiful. Double-check everything. This looks good. Looks good. Everything looks great under here. If you by chance have any fluid-like what we do, I would just clean it down. And then let's get up top and check to make sure that our indicator is lined up. Let's run through the gears. We've got reverse, neutral, drive. Oh, this is perfect. Awesome. If by chance your indicator is off for some reason, you would just loosen your mounting bolts again just a teeny bit. Rock this a teeny bit in one direction or the other until it lines up. Then go ahead and snug it and recheck it.
Tools used
So once you're safely under the vehicle, if you look along the driver's side of the transmission, you're gonna see your neutral safety switch. Here's the wiring that we're gonna be replacing. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take both these off first. Let's see if I can get it. Okay, that one's a little stiff. The reason for that is because it has a securing point right here. You just use your little fork tool, pry it away from the switch, should come right off and then I can draw this away. Now we're just gonna work at giving ourselves a little bit of slack. To do that, We're gonna get this off of here. Set that aside because we're gonna need it, remove this tape and then pull this up.
That gives us plenty of room and now we can get started. So we're just gonna separate these wires. So there's two over here, two over there. We're gonna do the same thing on our new one, making sure that they match up. The next thing we're gonna do is start by removing one wire at a time. We're gonna cut this one. We'll peel back some of the lining here, and we'll do the same thing to this one. We'll connect it in, and then we'll do the same thing down the line to each one, one at a time that way there you can't mix it up. Give that a nice twist. At this point, you can either solder or you can use these little connectors right here, which I would recommend. When you get them you wanna make sure that you have heat shrink on them. If they don't come with heat shrink, you need to put heat shrink over it because you wanna make sure that no moisture gets inside this connection. Slide that right up in there as far as it can go. Now I'm gonna crimp it down. Give it a nice tug. Make sure it's secure. We've got our new connector here, where this one we cut super close. We're also gonna cut this one.
This one's gonna be the shortest wire coming off of here. So I'm gonna cut it up a little bit higher. Give myself a little bit extra slack because that's how I roll. Trim that off. Now we're gonna take the coating off of this one as well. Give it a nice little twist. Slide it up in there as far up in as it can go. Give it a nice pinch. Okay. Nice tug. You wanna make sure it does not separate. If it separates, you've got the wrong connector or you didn't crimp it tight enough, this feels great. Let's do the same down the line. So this one, the original one I cut short. This one I wanna go a little bit longer, like that, because basically what I want to do is I want to try to stagger these connectors. I don't want them all in one spot necessarily. If I can make them just staggered, it's gonna be much better overall.
I cut that front one. So I'm gonna do the same thing. Cut the front one on this one, this one, like I said, it's gonna be longer than the original one. Just like that. Splice this one in there. Slide it right up and then crimp it down. This is looking great. Crush it down, nice. Last one. All right, so this looks great. The next thing we're gonna do is melt down this heat shrink, so it condenses right up against the wire and keeps all the moisture out. Give it a nice squeeze. Do the same thing to all. Now that we have those done up nice, we're gonna use a little bit of electrical tape and we're gonna continue by protecting these and keeping them securely together. Perfect. Now we're gonna protect the terminal end by using a little bit of dielectric grease. Let's get the wire loom back, put over this. Try to keep these wires as safe as possible of course. Here we are. Make sure they're all in there. Now, we're just gonna put a little sling of tape around the end here just to make sure the wires don't come out and then we'll connect them back into the neutral safety switch. Now we'll just give them a nice tug, make sure they're secure. We're gonna put back on that little securing point here for the wiring.
