The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay neutral safety switch

I have a 54 chevy 1/2 ton with original hydramatic tranny. i am trying to figure out how to hook up the neutral safety switch, are there wires that hook up to the two prongs, or are they for reverse lights? any help on getting the switch to work would be great! thanks

It pretty much is in series with the wire that goes from start switch to starter solenoid. It is closed circuit in Neutral so that basically, the pushbutton starter switch will do nothing if shifter is in any gear except neutral.

Here is a little information from the Chevrolet Service News Bulletin (January 1954) about the neutral safety switch (pages 3 and 4).

I will check out a wiring diagram tomorrow and I will also check out how my push button is wired. My guess is that the hot ignition-switch lead goes to one side of the dash push-button starter-switch. The other side of the push-button starter-switch goes to one side of that neutral safety switch on the shift column (in the engine compartment). The other side of that neutral safety switch on the shift column goes to the starter solenoid.

If you have no wires on the neutral safety switch, then I would guess that your push-button starter switch on the dash goes directly to the starter solenoid.

I am just now learning about these '54 Hydra-Matics. I drove mine tonight (for the third time) after tuning the carburetor (mostly correcting misconnected vacuum lines by the previous owner and bringing down the idle speed and setting the mixture screw for maximum vacuum and smooth acceleration)). It shifted up and down much more smothly after these corrections.

Here is part of a wiring diagram from my 47-54 GMC maintenance manual showing the neutral safety switch for the models with hydramatic transmissions. The switch is in the top left corner of the diagram inside the dotted lines.

http://community.webshots.com/photo/551791889/2106130080090990065oYsiQt

If you look at the assembly manual, It makes it pretty clear.