OK, the trans switch should have 4 wires going to it.
Red/white, Gray/white, green/white, purple

When in a forward gear, red/white and gray/white are connected
in neutral, red/white and green white are connected
in reverse, red/white and purple are connected

So I would assume if you hardwired red/white and gray/white together, the machine would always think it was in a forward gear.
I can't see there being a problem with the machine being in neutral, and 'thinking' it's in gear.

I am showing the green/white wire is directly wired to the neutral indicator light and the purple is directly to the reverse light... so their only purpose is for the lights.
So if you were to hard wire those 2 wires, AWD would work directly off the AWD button itself. It also appears that this would bypass the reverse AWD needing to have the override button pushed [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]

-Chris

SO CHRIS,SHOULD I TAKE THE SWITCH OFF THE OLD SHIFTER AND USE IT TO TRY THIS?do i need to cut any wires or what? btw my xplorer is a 95.. thanks for the replies................

I had this same trouble on my old 96 Sportsman and ended up just using a short bungee cord to hold it towards the rack.It was a pin but worked.Could try adjusting the shift rods a little tighter but not to where it wont go from F to R.

King diamond.
What you could do, is simply hardwire the connection in.
Since the front hubs shouldn't engage unless the AWD button is on, you would just need to find the ends of the 2 wires (red/white and gray/white) going into the switch and jump them... bypassing the original switch completely.
This would turn your AWD button into the switch, but you would lose the neutral light and reverse light (oh no!, haha)

Note that the red/white wire is just a +12v, so truly you could leave everything hooked up to the switch and just find the output of the green/white wire and find an open spade terminal on the board up front and give it 12V. That way, neutral and reverse lights would still work just fine.

-Chris

[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img] well, today was a good day!!!my new friend brad,who goes by the handle
ftwflh on this board made a 1.5 hr trip to my home to help me get my shifter\awd problem solved.this guy is great and a very knowledgeable and likeable guy.he also had jj with him who is a great guy also..just wanted to thank you guys for coming and looking forward to the camping or riding we discussed..also to chris aka GST97 the tips you gave me were good advise,but i ended up getting the switch working without bypassing it.. thanks again guys

It was my pleasure to make the trip and meet a new friend and ridding buddy.PJ got his shifter working now too.Had to use the shift handle.The weld on his was broken.And when he changed handle he found mud under the boot that he got from you so it wasnt NOS but it was ok.When you get the rest of the prts give me a holler Brad