"Service Column Lock" problem returns
NCM, Labor Day 2005
After the Hall of Fame Banquet, on the way back to the Microtel,
I stopped at K-Mart for some batteries.
Back in the car:
No big deal, I thought. This is fuse BCM2!
(Click photo for background)
Well, unlike the April incident (see link above), this time the fuse blew every time as soon as the ignition was turned on.
A half-dozen fuses later, necessitating another trip back into K-Mart), I called AAA for another flatbed ride.
When AAA arrived over an hour later, they didn't have a flatbed that could handle the low nose of the Vette.
The one they used in April had been wrecked a couple weeks earlier! The driver was very apologetic,
and dropped me at the Microtel, less than a mile away.
Weird - the 2 incidents of this "Service Column Lock" problem, 5 months and 7000 miles between them,
and they both occurred within 1 mile of each other, 1300 miles from home! Bad vibes in that area or something...
Yikes! Leaving my baby at K-Mart overnight? With THE FENDER in it??
Saturday, Sept. 3
In the morning, I got a ride to the Museum with Joe Thomas, another Corvette guy staying at the Microtel, stopping at K-Mart to check the status and to pick up THE FENDER.
The first person I saw when we got back to the Museum was Dave Hill, Corvette Chief Engineer. I told him about the latest incident, since he knew what happened in April. Then I went across the street to Art's Corvettes to see if I could sweet talk him into flatbedding the Vette back to the Museum. He readily agreed. On the way back to K-Mart, I filled him in on the sequence of events. He thought that the problem was probably not the lock mechanism itself, but the switch on the column that detects whether the lock is engaged or not. He thought that if he just unplugged that switch that the car would work just fine.
Here's Art, working under the dash. He was right! After identifying and unplugging the purple & white wire to the switch, he started it up and drove around the lot with no problem! And no error messages on the display!
THANK YOU, ART!!!
I drove back to the Museum, taped the unplugged connector out of harm's way, and put the bottom of the dash back together. Then I tracked down Dave Hill to fill him in on our latest discovery in the on-going saga of the dreaded column lock problems. He asked for one of my cards, saying that he wanted to have his top troubleshooter talk to me about what we had learned.
OK. Now back to work!