go to try to start the car and the lock wont turn. i played with it for 5 minutes and got it to turn and start the car . so now i have it in the run position and just disconnect the battery and turn the key just a little bit to shut the car off . what the heck has gone wrong .help guys

Try squirting wd40 in there or graphite.

i allready tried the graphite in there and no luck what is causing the problem .do i need to get a new switch or is something else broke ?????

Quote:

I would thing it's the switch. I doubt it is a linkage or steering column issue.

Well... there is a lot going on in there. Mechanical bits that can bind.

How many miles? I don't remember off hand.

The failure is at the ignition key cylinder. The switch itself is down the column, activated by a shaft.

so what do i need to do . i bought a new key switch at a dealership in vegas .it has a funny key in it do i have to get a key made before trying to replace it .i have never done any type of work on this type of thing before .should i just take it to a dearship to get it fixed ??? the car has 100k miles on it

oh , it was doing this for a week now and before i just turned the switch to the acc mode then turned the switch to start from there and it worked for a while .

more then likely something with the push button release has given up.

It requires removing the wheel to fix.

I wouldnt go to the dealer but that's me. Did you try another key with the same results? More than likely the ignition cylinder needs to be replaced. When you get the new ignition cylinder it will have a non-chipped key that fits. Measure your current key for the Vats value, get that key value on a blank, then use the new key from the ignition cylinder to cut the new chipped key.

thanx for the info . i bought a new lock cylinder from a dealership that has the correct pill value.so the next ?is how do i go about fixing this . the fsm is so involved it makes my head spin . can someone who has done this walk me through it . guess when you reach 60 you want the simplist explanation . with everything thats gone wrong this year i am thinking it might just be time to give up the dream of owning my zr1s and just go get something new and dependable

I've only done an ignition cylinder swap on a 79....no air bag. Not terribly difficult, but time consuming and you need a few specialty tools like a bridge puller. The airbag scares some people but it's not that big of a deal. I'll try to find a write up for you if I can.

Matthew

thanx for your help . this is driving me crazy

Here is a link for a decent set of pictures. I had another better link, but it seems to have vanished. This is for a non-air bag system. Just refer to your FSM for that.
I'll try to find the better link.

Joel

http://www.carcraft.com/techarticles/ ... lumn_repair/photo_02.html

http://domesticmisfits.net/forums/vie ... rvette+steering+clumn+fix

http://www.steeringcolumnservices.com/

I just had my steering column replaced.

The bushing for the height adjuster we so bad it was screwing up the lock.

Replacing it with a used unit was cheaper than rebuilding the old one.