95 f150. When I parked my truck last night, I turned the key off but it all of a sudden went very loose. Now it will turn back and forth with no resistance. I can turn it all the way forward and it will still engage the starter and it will start and drive fine but I have to unplug the distributor to kill the motor as the key will not shut it off. Plus, I have to unhook the battery when it's not running as all the power stays on (fuel pump, radio, etc) even with the key completely removed. What broke?

 

Sounds like your lock cylinder. They're pretty cheap, though. Maybe $20-30 if you go to a parts store. Probably cheaper online.

 

That's the part I put the key in? I heard something about an ignition actuator could have broke. Do you know to figure out which it is? Or does it not sound like that could be it? I don't have a lot of experience with the insides of the column.

 

 

$30 and 10 minutes of your time is worth it if it saves you from that ^ lol

 

I'm not saying 100% if it's the lock cylinder or not, but if the new one does the same thing, you can return it and you're only out the time it took to swap it out.

 

This is the lock cylinder

 

To be sure it isn't the actuator rod you can pull the column cover and watch the rod as you turn the key to on then back to off. If the rod doesn't come back on it's own then the cylinder is the issue, if the rod appears to come back then it's snapped somewhere and only the back portion is coming back.

 

Looks like it's the actuator. I looked up how to replace it and it seems to be a real pain in the @$$! Is there a set-up I can do to bypass it and just use switches or something to get the job done?

 

You can install a push button starter but you will still have to come up with a way to turn the power supply on/off. They are not too awful bad to do, here are vids doing it on a Thunderbird, same basic principals.