This 2015 Kia K900 was in my bay for diagnosis of several problems when the engine stalled and would not restart. There I was at the end of the day with the car half in and half out of the shop. My first thought was no big deal, I will just knock the shifter into neutral and roll the car the rest of the way inside my bay so the door could be closed.
My next thought was Oh Crap the electronic shifter does not work unless the engine is running and the starter just died. I looked around for the slot or hole to stick the key or a screw driver in the unlock the shifter but there was nothing evident.
I looked into service information but was not having much luck so I searched for it on line. After about an hour of trying to figure out how to move this Kia, I found a single line about turning a screw under the storage compartment. There are several “storage compartments” in the center console but it turns out the one I needed was in front of the shifter assembly. There is a door over the compartment but it was already open. I looked in the compartment and there was a rubber tray in the bottom that had to be removed. Sorry for the dark picture.
In the next picture you can clearly see the oval slot or hole to the left of the compartment bottom.
If you look closely you can see the screw head slot in the next image.
I just needed a long, skinny common screwdriver to turn the screw. My first attempts were unsuccessful because I would turn the screw several times and it would rotate back to it’s original position as if it had a motor attached to it. Well, it turns out is does have an actuator motor attached to it. The solution was to just turn the ignition fully off and open the driver’s door. Then I turned the screw to the right about 10 times and checked to see if the car would now roll when I pushed it. Hallelujah, it worked.
Since I already had to raise the vehicle up in the air to check out the starter malfunction, I looked around to see what that screw might be attached to. I could not see a direct connection but I am reasonably sure that it attaches to this cable indirectly. I think the screw head that I turned on the interior of the vehicle was part of a driveshaft in an actuator that uses a lever to connect to tis cable. Time to call it a day.
I did diagnose that the starter was faulty but by the next morning and after a couple of tries the starter worked. The engine started and the shifter worked. I did not have to turn the screw backwards to put the transmission back into park because once the engine was running the computer system repositioned everything back to it’s desired location.
The starter fault coupled with a larger transmission issue and the customer decided to trade out of the vehicle.
To see the video version of this post use the link below.