Nissan Motor Company Limited

Kinzoku Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha

Toshio Kanai

Haruo Mochida

Yoshimitsu Takeda

Tsutomu Iwasaki

Mikio Masaki

A steering lock system for locking a steering system of an automotive vehicle equipped with an automatic transmission. The steering lock system is comprised of a selector position sensor for detecting a selected position of a selector lever for the automatic transmission. The selector position sensor is adapted to produce a parking position signal when the selector lever is at a park position. A key cylinder is rotatable to take a LOCK position by an ignition key insertable into the key cylinder. The ignition key is enabled to be pulled out of the key cylinder at the LOCK position, upon which a steering shaft is locked. The ignition key is disabled from being pulled out of the key cylinder upon absence of the parking position signal from the selector position sensor while is enabled to be pulled out of the key cylinder only in response to the parking position signal from the selector position sensor, thereby improving reliability of operation of the steering lock system.

Steering lock system

To prevent an automatic transmission vehicle from creeping when the engine is started with the shift lever set to Neutral position, an alarm is produced when the shift lever is set to shift positions other than Park position and simultaneously the ignition key is removed from the ignition key cylinder or inserted into the ignition key cylinder at engine halt. Therefore, whenever the driver removes the ignition key from the ignition key cylinder or inserts the ignition key into the ignition key cylinder at engine halt, the driver is forced to securely set the shift lever to Park position on the alarm signal.

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Ayase, Japan

Toshio Kanai