Telling me I need to shift to Park but already there

[Sstupid]

Hi guys. My car won't turn off completely after I put it in Park and hit the Start button. The motor shuts off and the radio stays on. I get a symbol on the cluster telling me to shift to Park even though it did show me in "P" on the cluster before trying to shut the car off. If I get out of the car I get an irritating solid tone from the under hood speaker. Any ideas? I thought maybe it would be the gear selection switch but it did show me in Park before shutting down. Separate sensor maybe?

[bicsintegra]

this is happening to my wife's ford edge sport, and according to the edge forums it is a shift sensor gone bad. has not happened in my M yet but I do not drive the car but maybe 250 miles a year.

[Sstupid]

Down by the driver's side, on the bottom of the shifter assembly, is a white plug that contains all the wiring leading from the shifter switches to the car harness. I unplugged that and I was able to shut the car off. I plugged it back in and it still works, for now. I do not have a lot of faith in this, though, and it will be really irritating if I have to keep ripping out my cup holder, seat climate control switch, and gear shifter panel, to unplug that thing. I'm hoping whatever gremlin it was has gotten bored and sought out another victim.

[Ilya]

lol @ gremlin.

Might need replacing eventually, but (as I work in IT), sometimes simply reseating a connection is all that is needed. Here's to hoping you fixed it

[Sstupid]

Still working, Ilya! I agree that it will certainly come back. I hope a spider just died in the shifter assembly, somewhere, I shook his carcass loose or something, but I imagine the issue will return at some point. I don't know if you've ever looked at the shifter for the old M45's but it's an encased piece of plastic and looks impossible to fix should something break. I was sourcing shifters on the junkyard sites, just in case.