DIY: Replace dreaded steering-lock on 2009s and early 2010s.

akmofo

I haven't gotten to test this yet with my car as it's at the dealer, but pulled the thing apart today (which was a pain in the ***, and I kind of mangled it)

Here are the pics of the internals.

Also, made a video showing how the gear works, buttons get hit, and how to unlock the gear if it's locked in the outer position:

Nissan Steering Lock internals, and Unlocking from Locked Position - YouTube

Also, here are the high-res versions of the pictures. The forum only lets me do up to 600k.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1027199...eat=directlink

Background: the car is at the dealer, the dealer wanted $1000 to fix it, so I went there last night and pulled the part out and brought it home. What's weird is that when I pulled it out, it was already in the unlocked position, and I think the switches were being hit. but maybe not all the way in. Regardless, the temporary plan is to just leave the board/motor assembly out of the steering lock all together. The gear is in the unlocked position, and I'll put the board/motor assembly into something else so I can get the car home.

I will say that when I opened it up, you can see in the pictures that the switches were totally covered in grease.

I use a circuit tester, and tested the switches from the bottom of the board. (See the last picture of the bottom of the board). Going from left to right, and connectors 1-6.

When the switch is all the way out, 1, 3, 4, 6 are all connected.

When the switch is depressed (there's only in, no half-way as theorized by Fritz in other post).
1 and 6 get disconnected and 2,3,4,5 are all connected.

This leads me to believe that ripping the switches off the board completely wouldn't work. Also, I don't think if you were to solder 2,3,4,5 together it would work either, because 1 and 6 would still be connected.

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SouthArk370Z

Fantastic job! Repped.


Now if we could just find someone to reverse-engineer the electronics, a plugin module to fake out the BCM could be built. Maybe someone could build/sell them a lot cheaper than the ~$700 Nissan wants.

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Baer383

Your efforts are commendable but this has already been tried with no success the electrical parts are to fragile to be taken apart screwed around with and put back to together then expected to work.

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akmofo

Now that I've gotten mine working again, I'd say the worst part of a self-repair is just getting the switch open. Took me probably an hour once I had my drill charged, and used the correct Dremel cutter.

It super easy to just move the gear back into the unlocked position, and pull the motor like I did then put it back together. All in all, it should only take a couple hours. I spent a lot longer trying to understand how everything worked, but really the only important parts are pulling the motor to prevent accidental lock engagement, and forcing the buttons down. You could even forgo reinstalling the lock all together (there would be an empty hole which could cause problems), put the board inside something, and/or tape the buttons the down.