[thephantom1492]

Finally, it did it again yesterday.
Today I got it to "reliably" do it.

I did some tests... after some pain and contorsion, I came to the conclusion that the switch was effectivelly bad. I got a quote of 160$ for the switch at canadian tire... With atleast 2 weeks delivery time! They got the finger and I went with plan B: dissassembly.

A note of warning to those doing the same thing: it is NOT a rotary switch. The engineer went a bit creative... Remove only and only the most back section. Removing the middle section is to be done very carefully. There is 5 pins and 5 tiny springs that WILL fall when you open it up. I then cleaned the contact with sand paper 2000...

Attached is the picture of the contacts, you can see 2 contacts (middle left and top right

Interressingly enought, the worse contact is the starter one, followed by the wiper/turn signal/multifunction switch... next is the blower. I'm wondering why I didn't got more trouble, but it might explain why sometime the car was feeling weird... probably that the contacts was so worn out that the PCM was lacking some power at time.


Now, time will tell if the cleaning will work, or if it's only temporrary and will fail miserably.

BTW, for those who want to do it, you need to remove the radio, the top cover of the steering, the bezel of the instrument cluster and the intrument cluster. It is recommanded to disconnect the battery negative and can save you some pain later on. You have 4 "wires" going to it. The first that you will notice is the shifter lock cable. Put key to on, shift to drive (not sure if it's needed), then under the key assembly there is a button to remove the cable. Then remove the 2 connectors for power and signals. For the passlock module... Key to on, under the key assembly there is a button, push on it and pull the key, the cylinder will come out, don't worry, it's ok and safe. This will also disconnect the passlock module, then you just need to pull gently on the wire and that's it. Then gently remove the back cover, it will expose the contacts. You will notice that the contacts can be removed, like in the pic. be carefull to not bend them. Do it at your own risk, there is a good chance of breaking stuff, so only do it if you can get your hand on a new switch and be prepared for it.

Rock auto sell the switch for ~65$+shipping, if it fail I might order there...

edit: Wiggling the key a bit can not cause the contact to change: due to the conception of the switch, the pins are in an hole, wiggling make the hole move without touching the pin yet... only big movement cause the bump to touch the pin, causing it to lift almost right away. This can cause huge diagnosis nightmare... I had assumed a rotary switch, hence why I had doubt: wiggling did not caused any change, both while in trouble and when working.