Clutch neutral safety switch

[efnfast]

I changed the clutch on my 04 today. After putting everything back together the car would not start - when I would turn the key the starter would click and then I would immediately lose power for ~30seconds (i.e., no horn, windows, radio, etc..) and then power would come back, kinda like a circuit breaker blew and then reset.

I also found that if i keyed the car on, let the gauges sweep, then keyed it off, the gas gauge would start to settle at back to 0 and then freeze, unable to return to the rest point.

What I traced it to was the clutch neutral switch - if I plugged it in, all of the above would happen. If i unplugged it and jumpered it to bypass it everything was fine. Plug it back in, all of my problems returned immediately.

So here's my head scratcher - why would a defective switch kill all of my power when i try to start the car and mess with my gauges? Shouldn't the only symptom being that when i would try to start the car nothing would happen (like when you start the car w/o pushing in the clutch)?

 

[hotcobra03]

sounds like a loose battery connection.

 

[efnfast]

no, it's definitely the clutch neutral switch. car ran fine with my new jumper setup yesterday. Today I unhooked the jumper and plugged it back into the clutch neutral switch. As soon as i turn the key to start the car i again get a loud click followed by loosing all power to the vehicle for ~30 seconds (and underneath the dash there's a TIC TIC TIC TIC TIC sound for several seconds).

Plug jumper back in and car is fine.

In any event I'm just leaving it jumpered, but I can't understand the circuit because I think it was as simple as forming a closed/open connection.