Battery is good. Starts other peoples cars. Put key in all light, air, radio come on. Turn key, everything goes off and it will not start. Stop turning key, everything comes back on. Also shifter will not shift out of park. Help. Anyone got any ideas.
Well, maybe. When a switch becomes faulty, it can fail to make a connection; or, it can make a connection which is poor and causes the voltage to drop, from there on. Lowered voltage won’t be enough to operate other things, such as a shift-lock solenoid, starter solenoid, etc.
You would have to check the voltage going into a switch (or, solenoid), and the voltage coming out, to find the fault.
On many vehicles – I don’t know about the Millenia – you can’t shift out of park unless the ignition is on and the brake pedal is depressed.
It has never crossed my mind until now to wonder how they do that. But my guess would be that the locking of the shifter in Park is done electronically. Based on that, my guess is that maybe you have a defective ignition switch that is powering the radio et. al. when it is turned on, but is not powering the shift lock and – when turned further – is not powering the starter solenoid.
By the Way. “Not starting” turns out to be kind of non-specific. There are several kinds of non-start – turns over but doesn’t fire; tries to turn over, but can’t; Clicks loudly once, but doesn’t try to turn over; Does nothing whatsoever. I’m guessing that you are seeing nothing whatsoever, but it might help if you clarified that.
Let’s get back to basics. Do you have a good battery? If your battery has enough power to start “other peoples cars”, that has no indication on whether or not it is adequate to start your car. All cars take a different amount of current depending upon engine size (4,6, or 8 cyl), ignition system, engine compression, any other loads that might be sucking down the battery current. Since you seem to have two problems, your car won’t start and your car won’t shift out of park, it seems like your car lacks the energy required to activate the shift interlock or start motor. Try jumping the car or charging the battery for a few hours.