1. Home
  2. Saturn Cars Forum
  3. Ignition Switch

Ignition Switch

I have a '95 Saturn SL2 that tonight had a small problem. First the last few days the "Key In" chime would ring whenever I had the drivers side door open whether the key was in or not. It would go off if the door was shut, a annoying situation but livable. Tonight when I came home from work I noticed that the chime did not ring when I opened the door. Hurray, it sort of fixed its self. Thought I would try to insert the key a few times and see if it was indeed a bad or sticking "key in" switch inside the ignition switch or not. When I inserted the key and had turned it on and off a few times, smoke came out from the steering column. At first jut a bit and then quite a bit. I quickly popped the hood and disconnected the neg. term of the battery to save any future damage. (Kind of like the car) Yep, I guess the ignition switch has a problem. My question is does anyone one know of any history of Ignition Switches going bad in on Saturns. I have had this car since new and it now has 103k on it with no major problems other than regular maintenance items.

Jerry

Reply to
JJ
Loading thread data ...

wow.

That makes me nervous.

My chime is goofed up like that. Rings when ever.. a few times I have noticed that it would chime a few times while driving down the road..

but the smoke never happened.

Buzz

Reply to
Joe Biadasz

This same situation happened to my cousin with his '97 saturn. We traced it back to the ignition switch too. There's a piece of spring metal in the switch that acts as the switch to indicate when the key is in. In my cousin's case this piece broke into smaller pieces. These pieces then worked their way around the switch then finally shorted out between +12V supplied to the switch through fuse IGN4 and the ground going to I/P Splice Pack (GND). The small black ground wire was what made the smoke. In the process it cremated itself. This wire runs from the ignition switch through the wiring harness to way up underneath the dash board where it connects into a grounding block. In our case we inspected the harness for damage to other wires. Fortunately there was no significant damage.

I think this is quite a common problem with saturn ignitions. The replacement switch we got from the junkyard had the same broken switch in it. In the end we gave up on the key chime, cleaned the switch out and put it back together. It works fine.

Good Luck

P. Wiebe

JJ wrote:

Reply to
P. Wiebe

Bingo, that's exactly what happened to this '95 SL2. The same black ground wire when up in smoke. Disassembling the Ignition switch revealed that the same piece of spring metal that you refer to had one side of it broken off and probably had made contact with +12v somewhere inside the switch as it was also blackened. I replaced the switch and removed the charred black ground wire. Yes I have no "key in" warning chime anymore, but that's O.K. by me. I like your idea to remove the "innards" of the switch so that that part doesn't break off again and possibly cause more damage next time. But oh well, I not going to remove the switch again and besides since it's a new switch maybe it won't break for another 150k miles. Thanks for the info and since I now firmly believe that that is what caused the problem, I can sleep better with the car in the garage with the battery connected!

Jerry

I think this is quite a common problem with saturn ignitions. The replacement switch we got from the junkyard had the same broken switch in it. In the end we gave up on the key chime, cleaned the switch out and put it back together. It works fine.

Good Luck

P. Wiebe

JJ wrote:

Reply to
JJ

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.