A while back someone tried stealing it from a parking structure at my work. But they couldn't get it because theres a trick you gotta know with the gear selector (becuase its old and broken too) and so they abandoned the theft. The screwed up the lock cylinder and those plastic turning tabs you can use with your fingers to grab and turn. Those are missing. My key started to bend pretty bad over a couple days of use, so I found out I could just use a small screwdriver myself to turn the outer portion of the cylinder and the van would start right up.

Around this same time I also replaced the brake booster and MC with help from people here on this site. But since these two incidents, the thing has had mad trouble starting. Turning the lock cylinder will result in a simple electrical click and then the van wont turn over. I can keep triggering this click over and over again by turning the screwdriver and eventually I'll just get lucky and the van will crank and fire up. Ive been doing it this way for weeks.

But yesterday after filling gas, it straight up died leaving the station. Had a guy push me to a parking space and I began fiddling. NOTHING was working anymore with the screwdriver, just click click click. Not that machine gun click you get sometimes if your battery is low or sometimes I've heard with starter problems. So I go down under the van with a hammer and smack the starter a couple times like you hear can help. No change.

So I decided to try the key for some odd reason instead, and after just 2-3 clicks, the van fired right up.

Question is, does the key do something the screwdriver doesnt? And my random shut down was an event caused by the key not being inserted during driving? Or is my starter just plain going bad and I got lucky?

Also, is this a quick repair? Once I tried replacing a lock cylinder on my daughters 2004 S-10 and it didn't go well, had to abandon that project at that moment and put the old one back on becuase the new one just plain wouldn't work. Is this going to be a giant project in this van?

 

Ignition switch coming apart?

 

Yeah its pretty buggered but the key will still get the thing started.

 

A fault with the starter wouldn't shut the van off. A messed up ignition switch would. Sounds to me like your ignition switch is indeed buggered. It could be that the key did something the screwdriver didn't--more likely IMO you just got lucky with how the busted pieces aligned that time.

IIRC on the F150 you have to drop the column to get to the switch (pushrod sorta deal off the cylinder), hopefully the van isn't like that.