Yesterday I get into my Xterra going to work, start the engine, put it on drive but then I notice that it went to neutral and got stuck, the shift handle suddenly felt loose though the mechanical interlocks with the start key and break pedal are still there. I knew that it's not gonna be a quick repair so I took my wife's car and to my luck schools were off that day due to weather warning in the UAE.
Later I went through the service manual of my truck which I have downloaded to my iPad when I first bought it, I found out that the shift selector handle is connected to the transmission through a control cable with the same concept of bike wire breaks, now the loose handle relates to possibility of the control wire snapping from transmission side or from handle side.
When I went back home I took a look under the truck to see if the control wire is snapped from transmission side, it was ok. I moved the leaver on the transmission side and noted that gears are changing on the dashboard indicator, good now I know it's the control wire problem
This is the P position
And this is the 2nd gear position
Then I decided to open the cover of the shift selector handle,
My guess was correct, the control wire snapped off the handle pin,
The part that failed was the little plastic pushing connecting the cable to the handle pin
I went to the spare parts store in Mussafah but they only had the whole shift selector control cable assembly sold as one piece but it was 22 dollars, i think it was not the genuine Nissan part as the one in my car looked much better quality, or maybe Nissan is cutting cost these days
All I needed was the little plastic pushing as I was not welling to replace the whole thing as it looks like a big job. So I snapped it off the new control cable assembly
It took some time to get it in place as the space is very tight, I also had to put the handle in 2nd position and the leaver from transmission side underneath the truck also on 2nd position to get better access.
Finally put everything back to place
Success.
This saved my weekend and saved me the cost of getting my car transported to repair shop, cost of repair which is very high here in the UAE, the repair shop would have told me that they needed to replace the whole control cable which they would have charged me big money, so am very happy with the repair. Plus should the same happen to me in the desert, I know now what to do which is the main reason I wanted to do this repair myself.
Hopefully this will help someone else should they face the same trouble.
Regards,
Abdalla Kroosh
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
