How To Put A Car in Neutral With a Dead Battery – Most of the vehicles that are being manufactured recently boast of electronic ignitions and quite a number of them equally come with electronic shift lock.
This electronic shift lock is most times regarded as a safety or an anti-theft feature as it helps boost security.
This means that in a situation where your car battery is dead, which will also mean that the electronic shift lock cannot disengage with the key in the ignition, you will really be in a fix if you have no idea on what to do.
Have no worries however as we are here to show you how to go about it. The good news is that all vehicles that are equipped with electronic shift lock also come with a manual override.
The manual override will help you bypass the electronic shift lock in case of emergencies and we will show you just how.
Below we have outlined the procedure for it and if you follow it step by step you should have no issues achieving this.
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Steps to Take to Put a Car Into Neutral When the Battery Is Dead
1. Set your parking brake
The first thing that you have to do is to set your parking brake. It is important that you do this for safety purposes.
There are some cars that make use of a handbrake which will usually be next to your gear selector and there are other cars that employ the use of a pedal brake which is often situated the left of the vehicle’s brake pedal.
2. Locate and engage the shift lock Override.
After you have set the parking brake, the next thing that you have to do is to find and engage the shift lock override. As we have already pointed out earlier, cars that come with electronic shift lock will have manual overrides in case of emergencies.
What you are on the lookout for here is a small, detachable panel on the shift selector. Once you have located this, go ahead and open the panel up with a flathead screwdriver. When you have opened it drive the screwdriver into the hole and this will engage the manual shift lock override.
3. Finally
After you are done with the step two which is finding and engaging the shift lock override, you will then proceed to put your key into the ignition and turn it to the “On” or “Acc” position.
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After this fully press down on the brake pedal and then move the shift selector to neutral. And just like that you are done. So you see it is quite easier than you must have assumed, just follow these steps and you will get it done with no hassles.