Ignition switch

[kkmchan]

Thanks for all the great info here. My car's symptoms go like this: all of a sudden one day I removed the key and the car acted if the key was still it, beeping and radio stayed on. I was able to jiggle the key and made it normal for a couple times, but it eventually became a permanent problem. One night it was raining and I realized I couldn't turn on the windshield wiper. But if I turned the key just a tiny bit it worked!
After reading all the great posts here I figured it's the ignition switch. I called the dealership and was quoted $500 to replace it!
So I followed all your directions, except I didn't remove any seat or dash cover. It did take a lot of contorting your body, but good thing I'm a small built. The screws were not too tight so even with my jewel screwdriver making contact at an angle I was able to unscrew and screw back the 2 screws. Couldn't find any "screw locking paint" so I put some white-out in there not sure if that was a good idea.
I replaced it with the part from VolksWagen ($52) and every thing now worked as before!
The only thing is, the old switch that I swapped out, it doesn't look broken except it got some yellow/red color grease at the white plastic part (looks almost like ear wax!). Does that happen to any of you? Maybe all I needed was to clean out the wax? Anyway, I'm saving this one in case in the future I need to try to put it back in. I didn't do it since it was to late, but I recommend folks replacing the switch to maybe stick a paper towel in there and clean it up before putting the new switch in.
--Ken