A customer of mine called Saturday to say that her '97 Taurus would not start. They didn’t describe the entire situation correctly. Figuring that they needed a jump that would take five minutes I went to have a look. Here’s where it got a little strange. The key would go into the ignition lock and it would turn, but did not seem to have any resistance to turning. All of the idiot lights on the dash were on as though the car was on, but not running. It will run if I short across that starter to spin it. I turned the lock to the ON position and popped the LOCK out of the column. Then I could see into the switch itself. I put a screwdriver into the slot, figuring that they could at least start it that way until today (Monday) when I could possibly make a real repair. The switch WILL NOT TURN either direction WITH A SCREWDRIVER. It won’t go to “START”, and it won’t turn to “OFF”. I can see that the plastic pall that is supposed to lock the steering wheel tries to move into the locked position, but it seems to be broken off. There isn’t enough to lock the wheel. It locked and unlocked OK when it was last driven Friday. My suspicion is that someone, obviously not an experienced thief, tried to steal the car overnight. They broke the steering lock, and have also done something to mess up the ignition lock and switch so that it no longer works. I could not see anything in the (now) exposed column that looked fixable. Any ideas what I should do next? I can get a complete good used column to install if needed.
So I’m guessing no one has ever been there before. I’ve never tried this before, but I’ going to bump this on the chance that it just hasn`t been seen yet.
Can you replace just the lock/switch