The Nissan Path

Has anyone else had this problem. Wife was out running errands put the PF in park and could not get it out without wiggling the shifter fairly hard to disengage the shifter. Happened a few times in a row today.

What could possible problems be? Relay, solenoid, fuse??? What should I look at first?

Anytime i park on an incline there is a little more friction and clunk when i get out of park

I had this problem on my 08. I had thought it was a bad shift lock actuator, so I purchased one. You have to pull the center console out to replace it and it's still a bit of a pain. When I went to replace it, it didn't fix the problem. I looked into it a little further and found there is a three-wire, micro switch with a lever on it located behind the shift lock actuator. When the shift lever is put into the park position, it depresses the lever on the micro switch and, IIRC, it applies power to the ground side of the shift lock actuator to disable it until the brake pedal is depressed. The lever had bent slightly over time on the micro switch and was no longer working. I removed the micro switch and carefully re-bent the lever and put it back together and the shifter worked properly. It's been about 5 months now without a problem. The micro switch is only sold as part of the shifter assembly. I tried to locate the switch separately online, but had no luck. On the switch was stamped,"AV39237 0.1A 250V~AC 61216D." While I can't say this is YOUR problem, it is what I found wrong with mine. FYI, if you need to get it out of park in an emergency, there should be a plastic cap on the shifter that you can pop out and get access to the shift lock over-ride button.

smj999smj wrote:... there should be a plastic cap on the shifter that you can pop out and get access to the shift lock over-ride button.

Mine A/T shifter has this knob also, but it does not pop-out, but rather needs to be depressed quite deeply (too deep for my fingers, need to use a pencil or something like) to be able to override shift lock from parking position manually.

Regarding hard-to-disengage from parking position...I don't know if your problem is related, but I know quite some owners with A/T transmission which don't ever use hand brake. They use PARK position instead, which is very wrong! Parking position does indeed brake vehicle, but it is NOT in any way meant to serve as BRAKE mechanism instead of handbrake.

The proper usage when vehicle is under up or down incline:
- stop the vehicle, probably holding foot brake
- engage hand brake
- release foot brake to let the vehicle move few inches until hand brake holds
- only then switch shifter to PARK position

Doing so you will not stress transmission components and shifter will move from parking position with ease. Disregarding this procedure, you will have difficulties moving shifter from parking position, because parking tension belt is under tension when vehicle weight is stressing it, so it's natural for shifter to disengage from park very hardly (...and not healthy).