Steering column lock
Discussion
Third time failed! Seems that the harness kits supplied by GM are faulty in many cases and so although we have no active steering lock the relay tells the ecu we have and it hasn't unlocked therefore it cuts the fuel. Beware originally this recall only applied to pre 2000 vettes, now it seems to apply to all C5's.
After reading loads of posts on US Forums about the column lock, pre and post 2000, it was the first mod I made when I imported the Z06. The conclusion was that it was unfixable, if random. Of course, many cried out that it was all rubbish and then found, embarrassingly, that they got stuck in the middle of nowhere.
Picked the pace car up today. First failure the car was trailered to BM, they removed the locking plate so steering column no longer locks, fitted the GM wire/harness thing under the steering column which kids the ecu that there is still a lock (i think). This failed a few weeks later, the ecu did not 'see' the column was unlocked when the car was started so cut the fuel, had new relay fitted BM supplied the part but we paid for the labour. Same thing this time, BM have supplied yet another relay. Reading through the Corvette Forum threads on this it does seem that a lot of the relays are faulty but also GM do not really seem to have a failsafe way of curing the problem. We have not had the ecu reprogrammed as GM recommend in some bulletins as we have a custom programme that we don't want to lose, but even those who have had a reprogramme have still had problems. We had the pace car for over 6 years and done about 130,000 miles before the first failure so be warned, I think it can get you anytime!
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