I have an older style 4l80e trans and a 2003 5.3L motor. I got to wiring everything up today and noticed that the neural safety switch wont bolt up and the gear selector shaft is to short. Is there any way i can buy pass it or make it work?

 

The older 4L80E has no place to wire the neutral safety switch.I ran an early 4L80E for a while and zip tied the neutral safety switch out of the way,it never performed correctly and I bought a later model transmission.You could use an aftermarket controller from TCI,the controller can make everything work properly but cost about $800.I also had a problem manually shifting to L1 and L2 because the linkage lacked having enough travel.

 

When you said it never performed correctly, what was it doing. I am going to have to run with out it hooked up for a bit until I figure something else out

 

Mostly that the linkage had to be tweaked to engage drive and reverse[there was no actual adjustment so some imagination was required].The backup lights did not work and the transmission selector showed incorrectly.Tieing the wiring up was a mess and the nuetral switch had to be tweaked so the starter would engage,the zip ties got loose a time or two.In fact the starter would engage in any gear when I changed transmissions.

 

Did it affect the driving any or check engine lights? Those are some problems i could work out until i figure out a permanent fix. Thanks for all the info

 

So what will I need to do to make it drivable for a couple of days?

 

You can make brackets to hold your nuetral safety switch. Just make them adjustable so that you can tweak it to the correct spot so your gear shift indicator reads correctly and the starter will engage, then tighten it down. I ran an older 4l80e for about a year without any problems.

 

well its going into a 96 s10, so will i have to tweak it everytime i want to drive it, or is there a sweet spot i leave it in? You dont have any pics do you or have more details do ya. The gear selector is only long enough to put my shifter cable on and put a nut on it.

 

No i don't have any pics, sorry. If you don't have room to mount the switch just make sure that the gear selector says its in either park or neutral and then tie it up out of the way. At least you'll be able to drive it that way.

 

Ever heard of a built in neutral saftey switch? I was just told that the electronics in the trans mission will work everything and that i dont need to hook up the external one. Does that make any sense?