My friend was driving and was late to work. In his haste, he pulled the key out of the ignition to fast...before it was locked in the "off" position. Now the car won't start. Now you can turn the ignition without the key in place...you can hear the fuel pump go click click click, and all the dash lights come on....but the motor won't crank over...Fuses maybe? or is the ignition unit going to need replacement? What do you think?

 

If he has the pellet in the key he may have messed it up or the contacts in the lock cylinder.

 

No, but get this he must not have put it all the way in park, so that little microswich in the shifter was'nt depressed, anyhow we shifted to neutral, then started the motor no prob.

 

Maybe the park/neutral switch setup got messed up some how?

 

odd huh?

 

Actually, it does kind of make sense.

If you ever rip apart your interior (which I have, you will see how the key gets "locked" in by the shifter. There is a little cable that runs from the shifter assembly to the dash. That cable moves the column sleeve which locks the key cylinder. (remove the knee bolster and watch it).

In my Camaro's rehab stage, I kind of "forced" my key to the on position once (popped it past the shifter locking mechanism) and from that point, you have to push the key back (off) as far as it will go in order to put the shifter into park fully.

Just a thought.

 

Well that explains what happend....that's an interesting setup, but effective....I thought at first it might be some kind of theft-deterrent devise at work preventing the motor to turn on (like if you break the ignition to force the car to start or something like that)...Thanks for the knoweledge.

 

Here is my guess as to what happened.

The key was yanked, as stated, before the cylinder returned fully to the "lock" position. That means that the cylinder sleeve never fully got seated. That, in a sense, prevents the shifter from returning all the way to the park position, which means the park/neutral switch doesn't fully register. Now, when shifting to neutral, because its located in the middle, where the contacts aren't hindered by the key cylinder, it will line up there, hence, being able to start.

Try this: Put the key in the lock position, or as close to as possible. Jam the shfiter up into park HARD. That's what I did. You could also take it apart and manually reset it I suppose, if indeed it is the problem.

*edit* here's a picture Vader posted, shows whats going on sort of.