Unable to lock the steering wheel...Help!

[DRC]

Everything was alright till I came back after dropping my son to school today morning, then as usual, I pulled out the key out of the steering column, and got out of the car...Wait a minute.... Something amiss! Steering is still moving after the key is pulled out.

Tried again, ON-OFF again did not lock. I could hear the stub failing to get into the notch, but could not! I realized this lock may need a replacement.

1. I called Green Tracks, Javali motors. They said, they do not have the part at the moment, but refered to Concorde, if they might have. All the key operated parts including the door locks, and boot lock has to be replaced and may cost about a 1K - 2K.

2. Called Concorde, they were unable to confirm if they have it or not as the guy I spoke to was not at the garage. He asked me to call the office but the tele did not work.

3. Went to Manipal Motors (in spite of their reputation), and the lived up to their reputaion. But I got some info. The part are not available. But there are 2 parts, One Key barrel, and other something else. They do not want to tell me the price of either part unless they see what has happend. And they are too busy to open and see the damage.

Now, the question. Has any one had situation to replace this assembly for Fiat vehicles? How much did it cost. Are there really 2 parts. Is it possible to retain the same key, or gets changed? Help.

[DRC]

Well, A good part of this weekend was spent of getting into this problem.

I decided to open up the steering column myself, and here are the findings.

Actually there is nothing wrong with the lock mechanism as such. It wrks perfect. However, there is a slotted shaft (steering shaft) inside a barrel on which the lock mechanism mounts. Appearantly the shaft has foe some reason moevd up with reference to the barell, and the the stub is not getting a chance to get into the notch. Now I need to find out how to move the shaft back to the position...

Will work on that next week and post the updates...of course with pics!

[greatDrive]

I think I need to take some classes from you, I think you have done a lot of research on your Petra. Might help me in future in case of small nicks in my Petra
Cheers

[DRC]

Finally fixed it.
Had to move the shaft a little inside to let the notch find its place.

[kiranpashtakar]

Hey that's cool but take care that such an incident should not reoccur whilst you are driving/or you give the car to some one else to drive. Its better if you have some one competent to look at it. Not that you are not competent but a second pair of eyes will help

[DRC]

Originally Posted by kiranpashtakar

Hey that's cool but take care that such an incident should not reoccur whilst you are driving/or you give the car to some one else to drive. Its better if you have some one competent to look at it. Not that you are not competent but a second pair of eyes will help

Got the work approved by my wife

[Jaggu]

try to find out why it slipped out in first place also, coz as someone mentioned it shouldn happen again especially while driving, anyways great going

[DRC]

I am sure it can not happen while driving. Because when the key is on the key hole, the notch is actually retracted. I do not drive with the keys off.

The problem was that when the car is locked and key removed, the steering would not lock. This was becuase the spring loaded stub could not find the notch to seat.