I know it is odd to have both issues in the same post but bare with me. I ordered two front struts from RMT but before I did, I had a red light and message vehicle too low on the dash. The first time I put the car in gear was immediately after seeing this error. As soon as the car went into Park the interlock prevented me moving the shifter but the car was actually in reverse. Tripping the Park release lever under the console got me moving again and I got the car on my lift.

Changing the struts out went better than I hoped. The only extra step beyond what I found in the YouTube videos was to remove the bolt in the lower ball joint to give clearance to remove the downlink bolt. I changed both struts in an afternoon. The car raised itself while standing to the right level and the "too low" message went away AND I was able to move the shifter as normal. Now here is the interesting bit.

I noticed that when the shifter was put in gear, the parking brake did not come on but it did when I used the console switch...But the shifter stuck in park again. If I leave the emergency brake off, the shifter works perfectly except that the car will not apply it automatically when it is put into Park. My code reader does not show any errors.

I will report back when I get to the bottom of this, but in the meantime anybody suffering the Park interlock issue, try turning off the emergency brake before manually releasing the interlock and don't put the emergency brake back on ! Any thoughts to help me trace this issue please contribute to the thread.

Steve

 

From one exile to another-yes I was asked to leave...………………..joke

The park brake should come 'off' when you move shifter from park and 'on' when you remove key from ign.
With a window open you can hear it come on.
I don't normally hear it come 'off'.
Problems with that interlock can be traced to a failed 15 amp fuse sorry no ref no.

 

Thanks. From what I read I will need to recalibrate the ebrake. The brake does work with the switch, I did disconnect the battery when I was trying to get the car out of park so I plan to recalibrate tomorrow
Steve

 

I did the ebrake reset and now all is well,
Steve

 

No it wasn't.....I got underneath the car and checked - sure enough one of the bolts securing the transmission cable bracket was missing and the other was loose. I found a 10mm bolt with the right thread, applied threadlocker and put it in good and tight and also applied threadlocker to the other (8mm) bolt. Hopefully the end of my transmission lockout/epb issues. If you haven't done it already check this bracket. It is easy to get to and can cause many issues and mucho dinero if you don't. Check even if you don't have a problem as it seems to be very common on the X350 at least
Steve

 

Seems that about all the linkages in these trans seem to have this issue, all three of mine when looked at were a quarter to half turn from being tight enough, not very bad at all.