After spending a few frustrating hours going it alone on my 69 with no success I'm in need of some advice.

Just got the whole car back together and was going to fire her up and noticed the ignition switch would not move into the lock position. There is a new Le Carra wheel on so thought that the locking pin was being obstructed. Well, that was not the case. Thinking that maybe the gears jumped a few teeth I decided to try and remove the lock cylinder. How do the lock cylinders come out? I seem to recall just rotate the lock cylinder all the way back, push in and it should pop out. Because it would not even rotate to the lock position I tore the top half of the column off. Good idea, yeah right!

At this point, with the top part of the column in my kitchen, I still can not get the lock cylinder out. The flat gear, which connects to the ignition relay on top of the lower part of the column, looks in good condition as does the circular gear on the lock cylinder. What is puzzling is that I can manually move the flat ignition gear into all four locations, start, run, lock and acc. When I reassembled it only three positions were attainable, like there is not enough gear. I don't know what happened other than a gear slipped and to get it back together properly I need to get the lock cylinder out.

Any help would be most appreciated.
And at this point I'm thinking that a new tilt column sounds nice.

Cheers,
Joseph

the ignition relay/or switch on top of the lower column has a small amount of adjustment, see if you can loosen the screws and adjust it to work properly.

the key tumbler/or lock cylinder comes out by depressing a small key or tab at the bottom of the tumbler barrel. if yours has never been removed then a thin flashing has to be broken out first in order to see the tab. just push the tab and lift the tumbler out.

also, if you have a manual tranny with headers you have probably done away with the rod that attaches to the lever at the bottom of the column. this lever has to be in the correct position "i believe" in order to lock the steering column. try moving it from one extreme to the other while trying to get the key to lock the column.

good luck,
charles

near the top of the column, where the shifter could be, that sleeve rotates. my uncle had to do that on his (then) new 69 chevelle after he put a hurst in and got rid of all that "extra" linkage. Turn the sleeve one way to get it to lock, the other way toget the backuplights to come on!

Thanks guys!

I assume that you have a floor shift.
The reason that you can't rotate your ignition key all the way to OFF-LOCK is that the lower lever on your steering column must be in the all the way UP position to do it. You can either hook up and/or adjust the linkage from your transmission to the lever, or you can wire the lever full time in the UP position. It was mentioned that you will lose the ability to turn on your backup lights if you have a switch on your steering column down under the dash.

Here is a link to all the information you ever wanted to know about transmission shift interlocks. It is written around the Chevelle systems but is very applicable to Camaros as well.

http://www.corvettefaq.com/acar/StrgColumnTransInterlockSystems.doc

You didn't mention if you had a standard (non-adjustable) steering column or a tilt. Two of these four papers should help as well:

Standard Strg Column
http://www.corvettefaq.com/acar/StdColumnD&R110JA04.doc
http://www.corvettefaq.com/acar/StdColumnACarDisassemblyPage1.doc

Tilt Strg Column
http://www.corvettefaq.com/acar/TiltColumnD&R110JA04.doc
http://www.corvettefaq.com/acar/TiltColumnLineDrwg1.doc