On Sun, 2 Aug 2015 11:27:26 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

In article , lcb11211
@swbelldotnet says...

On 8/1/2015 7:47 PM, dpb wrote:
On 08/01/2015 5:44 PM, Leon wrote:
...

... It may not actually be the part you see, the lock, that
is the problem.

Has to be; that's what initiates the motion however the internals are
arranged--unless something comes loose internally

That was where I was going with that. We did sell ignition switches,
rack assemblies, and locks way back when due to something wearing out.
The expensive part was the labor and it was just as easy to replace
everything while in there. There were about 5 separate pieces that
could all contribute to the sloppiness of the works.
I'm thinking a lot of it has to do with how much less tolerance our
society has for things wearing out these days and how happy attorneys
are to go after any thing that moves.




and that would see to
have no real bearing on the weight and what is, by all press reports,
"turning off" the ignition. Then again, the press certainly isn't an
engineering root-cause analysis.

I'm still on GM's side on this one basically as being the fault of the
operator for doing something silly.

Well I will agree that GM is probably not totally at fault. One should
know how to safely control a vehicle if the engine dies, whether it be
from a bad switch/lock or running out of fuel.

But having said that GM is not innocent on countless other things that
they could have easily corrected over the years but chose not to do so.
Take part number 10000669 for instance. This was a reserve vacuum tank
that served to assist opening ventilation diverted motors. It looked
like a black plastic soft ball sized ball with vacuum tubes running to
it. We sold hundreds per year. It had no moving parts and yet went bad
because of the cheapness of the materials. Ford, OTOH used what
appeared to be a black tin can. That part literally looked like it may
originally have been used to hold a vegetable in your pantry. You could
have opened it with a kitchen can opener.

It's not just "safely controlling the vehicle". When the switch is
turned off the airbags are turned off.

Given than airbags, themselves, are a source of potential (and real)
law suits, it's reasonable to turn them off when the vehicle is off.
The fault still lies with the reason it's off.

I had a car that needed to be restarted occasionally (it took *many*
returns to the shop before they finally found the real problem). To
do it, it first had to be turned to the "off" position, which locked
the steering wheel. Ugly situations followed. Similarly, several
models lock the steering wheel when shifted out of "drive". Not so
good when the engine dies (coasting off the road may not be an
option).