Been chasing a hard starting problem for months. Have eliminated many possible causes. Usually takes 5-15 tries to start, cranking but not starting, hot or cold, although hot usually starts faster. Recently noticed that it sometimes starts in fewer tries from Neutral, and that sometimes it will not crank in Park but will in N, or vice versa. My understanding has been that it shouldn’t even crank if the NSS is bad, but this behavior makes me wonder. Tried to see what would happen if I bypassed the NSS as described in multiple threads, but either it’s not the NSS or I never found the right connector/pins to jump as I never got to a place of a quick start. 96 xj 4.0 auto. Also wondering if the trouble is a bad ignition switch and/or key cylinder.... there’s a lot of play there, and the car was stolen six months ago (presumably with a screwdriver start), but don’t know how to test for this. Trying different pressures, angles etc when turning key doesn’t seem to make much difference.

 

The NSS on my '96 gave intermittent starts in park then no cranking at all. Sounds as if you may have more than one issue.

 

a bad NSS won't even turn the engine over. (try starting in N, or slightly move the shifter between N and R/D while holding the key forward in the start position)

if you are getting a crank, no start, then it's probably CPS