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

 

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

 

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

 

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


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