Hi All,

Joined up because of a slightly perplexing problem and this place is a pretty good wealth of information.

Anyways, shift lever in a 2010 2.3L 4x2 auto was stuck in park after the truck sat for 2 weeks without being used. I have never seen this before parking the truck for that long.

Tried letting it warm up, stomping the brakes, depressing them very hard, and pushing the truck forward and backward. Nothing released the shifter from park.

Eventually I took apart the covers under the steering column and released the brake interlock lever and was able to start and drive away normally in Neutral. However, when i put it back into park it gets stuck again.

Brake lights are working fine. One other weird symptom - when i press down and release the brake, the stability control light comes on and stays on.

Any ideas / things to check?
I was thinking about making a quick picture guide to releasing the brake interlock since I didn't see anything on it and had a little trouble finding it myself. Interest?

 

There are a couple of fuses associated with the BSI(brake shift interlock), not related to Brake light fuse, #32(5amp).

Fuse #9(5amp), and if you have 4WD then #10(10amp), and #23(10amp)
These all power the processor in the dash, which sends power to the BSI

The BSI should have 2 wires
Blue/orange stripe is the "power"
Black/yellow stripe is the Ground

The BSI is a solenoid that locks shift lever in Park when it has no power, with key on, putting your foot on the brake should send power to the dash processor which will then send power to the BSI pulling the lock down and releasing the shift lever.

The BSI in explorers often had to be replaced, Rangers didn't seem to have that problem as much.
But check if BSI Blue/orange stripe wire has power with engine running and brake pedal depressed, if so and solenoid is not pulled in then replace BSI

 

Ok, checked a few things today.
First off, fuse no 7 is for ABS and there are no contacts in my fuse box for that spot(?) meaning I don't have ABS??

Second, no power to orange / blue wire on BSI. I followed the two wires to a black switch on the brake pedal and the blue/orange and black/yellow have ~12v potential between them but this does not change with depressing the brake.

There is also a blue switch which sends voltage only if the brake pedal is depressed. This switch is not related to the brake lights so I'm not sure what it does.

Any of this make sense?

 

#7 fuse wasn't used until late in the production run, #20 is your ABS fuse, so you have ABS

There are a few "Brake position switches", ABS use one, Cruise control, brake lights and of course BSI, not sure how they are combined, i.e. which one uses which switch.

Fuse #32 looks to be the main brake light fuse, violet/red stripe at the brake switch
When switch passes power on Brown/green stripe wire, it also goes to computer, this should then "tell' instrument cluster processor to send power to BSI to release shifter.
So it doesn't directly power the BSI

Are the other fuse mentioned in above post good?

 

Hi my name is Stephen. My 2008 XLT Ranger is stuck in Park. Where exactly is this shift interlock solenoid located? I've replaced the brake light switch however that did not fix the problem.

 

I forgot to post solution to my problem:

Had to replace blue switch by brake pedal. Fixed immediately.

The brake shift interlock solenoid is a small **** that, if everything was working, would release when you put your foot on the brake. You can release it manually by taking off all of the paneling below the steering column and reaching around underneath to the left of where the shift lever goes. It seems like it is literally a pin that holds the shift lever in place. I believe the owners manual has instructions on how to release.

I ended up tying a string to it because it was so hard to locate every time I needed to move the car and I would just pull that until I got it fixed.