OMFG! Im gonna need some serious luck with this

[Infinite-T]

Well the bad news is i have tested the hell out of evrything I can think of testing can cannot find anything wrong with the wiring... The shift lock must still be bypassed to get the car out of park.

The good news is, it turns out, my electronics professor at college is also a real car nut. He has wired and rewired many cars, has a diagnostic computer and a large heated shop. He has offered to take a look at my car and help me fix it in exchange for me helping wire his new hot tub! Sounds good to me and we both will be saving eachother a bunch of $$$.

So ill find out what the heck is going on tomorrow. I am looking forward to having everything back to normal with a car I have had for bairly a month.

BTW, I dumped Geico for a different company, I also made sure I had really good comp coverage

[07wHiTE 3.5SE 6sPD]

You guys know more than me anyway with all the electrical expertise. that's cool with the professor helping out. when you figure out the problem post it on here i would like to know myself. But for sure the reason you have to override the shift lock is because the signal from you pressing the brake is not activating the electrical actuator to release the lockout on the shifter... could be something simple as a ground since its a switch mechanism. good luck

[toxik]

damn i just read the whole thing, pretty crazy. no wonder seattle has such a high suicide rate.... lol jk

[07wHiTE 3.5SE 6sPD]

Also, check your fuses and relays... anything pertaining to the brake circuits because this guy at work had dropped a quarter into his accessory outlet and shorted it, blowing fuses and his shift lock release didnt work (had to override it with the key to shift from park)and after replacing all the blown fuses back to normal.

[MikeisSUPERBAD]

sorry to hear about that man...

but of course it wouldnt be covered under comprehensive.

comprehensive only would cover you if you hit a "live" animal with your car amongst other things like, fire, lightning, hail, theft, vandalism, etc.

rodents or vermin chewing up your wires or getting into your engine bay and causing damage is not covered by almost any auto insurance policy, its just one of those things that occasionaly happens and is very unfortunate...more of a headache than anything else.

its a tough thing to explain to a policyholder what is and what isnt covered when they dont read their insurance policy or think their auto insurance policy covers absolutely anything that happens to the vehicle.

oh and to the guy that said maybe consider it an act of god? uh no.. it was an act of squirrel or hamster -they were hungry lol sorry... had to think about the little guy... maybe he thought it was candy liquorice lol

[Infinite-T]

Yea, to the lay person, it is all just technical mumbo jumbo the insurance company tells you to get out of paying for something... nothing personal to the individual, they are just doing what their boss tells em to and following the company policy that always seems to be in the best interest of the company and not the customer... but that is a different story entirely.

SO the story finally concludes with the whole rodent damage thing!

I took the car to my professors garage like I was saying. We got to work on tracing out the problem. We spent a good hour tracing the wires out trying to find something amiss. We couldn't find anything wrong with the wiring. We plugged in the diagnostic computer. There was one error in the computer that an "electrical failure" had occurred. We cleared that, but still came up with the same problem.

Another half hour of tracing and it came out to be some silly fusible link in the power distribution harness in the engine compartment. It was small, inconspicuous, and unmarked.. But, Once replaced everything was back to normal and everything works like a charm. Despite the several days of mussing around trying to figure everything out the whole repair cost me about 30 bucks! If I had known about the fusible link I the whole repair would have taken about 6 hours.

I am very happy to have everything working again and back to normal. Especially since this will only be my 5th week of owning the car!