Being a 2 vehicle household, I am forced to drive the 1991 Chevy S-10 POS pickup truck, while wifeypoo gets the shiny new Trailblazer. Tonight, at school, I was glad I had the POS.
This pickup is so worn out that the key won’t stay in the ignition, and usually they will fall out when I hit a good bump. Of course, this happened on the way to my class. I park, shut the engine off, grab my books, and get out with the door locked. Just as the door slammed, an ‘Oh sh!t’ moment happened. My keys were still on the floorboard. Not much I could do at the moment, so I went to class.
I got back, and was wondering how to get in. I realized that I had the rear window open coming in, and I loosely latched it. I crawled in to the bed, whipped out my handy dandy hog-sticker pocketknife, and opened the latch. That got the window open. For the longest time, I’ve had a broken rake in the back, meaning for it to go to the dump in the next load. I took the handle, and managed to pull back the door lock toggle. Voila! I was in.
If I locked my keys in the Trailblazer, I’d have been screwed, and it would not have been like the couple doing the deed in the same lot last week…
Of course, it should be mentioned, that if driving the Trailblazer, one would assume the key would not fall out hitting a bump, and it never would have happened.
Although allow me to enlighten you on a habit of my own. I always carry two keychains with me, since I hate having a huge keychain smacking off of the steering column while driving. What I did, was I took the door key to each of my cars, and put it on the larger keychain, leaving the smaller one with only ignition keys.
So, if I happen to lock the key in the car, I can laugh at my stupidity, and pull the door key out of my pocket, and pretend it never happened.
I have the same problem with my 1965 Ford, also in many ways a P.O.S. I keep the car keys and the motorcycle key on a lightweight keychain that won’t fall out of the switch.
Mine won’t lock without the key, though, so can’t possibly lock the keys in the car.
There’s a bunch of older cars here (80s + early 90s, I can’t think of the specific makes/models offhand, sorry) that (for one reason or the other) allow you to pull the key out while the car is running. A friend of mine has a '74 or '75 Turana (that’s one I remember), and this is her process for starting the car/driving: Get in, start the car, take the key out and put it in her pocket, drive. To turn the car off, she just has to turn the spot where the key would be back to off (the key area has those metal bits that come up and turn with the key). I’ve seen about 4 or 5 cars that do that (that I know of). I live on res (dorms, at college/uni), so I tend to experience a lot of POS old cars when I’m bumming rides from friends.
The key comes out because the ignition lock and key are worn. GM provided these nifty little ears that let me turn the lock back to shut the engine off without the key. Fortunately,it still works to the point that I have to use the key to start.
Latch, it’s like you described, but I don’t know if I could have pulled out the key when it was new.
Kind of like what Latch mentioned, my family had a late 80s/early-90s K-Car (I think it was the K-Car 'cause I don’t think it was the other POS) that would let you do that.
The keyhole also had a plastic fixture that was shaped kind of like a wing-nut (with the key fitting through the hole of the wing nut). When you turned the key, both the key and the fixture would turn to the “on” position. You could remove the key and the “wing-nut” would still be “on”. You could shut the engine off by turning back the giant wing-nut. No key necessary.
Well, it’s certainly not a design feature - it comes from age and use wearing down either the key, the teeth within the ingition lock, or both. My '91 Pontiac does it if I use the original set of keys. The newer copies are fairly unworn and won’t come out when they aren’t supposed to.
My recently departed (sold to a needy kid for fifty bucks) '93 Duster ran without the key in the ignition–and I gotta tell you that a keyless run was rather useful at times. Especially when I needed to go back in the house after realizing that I left something behind.
I had a friend with an older car that he could do that with. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember him saying that the car company had intentionally designed it that way so that you could take out the key to go unlock the trunk without shutting off the engine. I’m not sure if that’s true or if he was just making it up to cover up the fact that his ignition system was worn out.
An acquiantance of mine used to own a Ford Maverick which no longer needed a key in order to be started. No, it wasn’t a custom job, just a POS that got to a point where it could be started by turning the ignition whether a key was used or not.
Yep, I had a '65 Chevy truck that I could take the keys out while it was running. Actually, the switch was so warn that, after having lost my keys for a short while, I could stick a small screwdriver or pocket-knife in the ignition and start it.
Another interesting um, “feature” was that I could actually turn the ignition off while still going down the highway. After a few seconds I could turn the key back on, causing the electrical systems to come back online and ignite the gas vapors that had collected while switched off. Result: backfire. The longer I left it switched off, the louder the blast. There was a particular fire-works stand on the way to school that hated me; every morning on my way to school I’d switch the key off about a mile before the stand, and switch it on right as I was passing in front of it. BOOM! Always scared the snot out of 'em.
Occasionally I would wish for a car that would start like your acquaintance’s Maverick, but then I thought a bit more and ended up with , “What the HELL am I thinking?!”
I did have another acquaintance who drove a custom job, he had a '48 Chevy pickup with a fuel line cutoff valve. Pretty much the same principle but difficult to spot.
