Actually a Buick question

[lawadm1]

My son has a 2001 Buick Century (3.1L), and we just found the weirdest thing. I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this. He's had the car for about 1.5 years now and it has about 250K miles. Under the dashboard we found an extra set of keys ziptied, and another ignition. And if the key is not in that ignition below the dash, then the car will not start using the ignition on the steering wheel. Has anyone seen this or know why this car would have two ignitions?

[lawadm1]

Is it possible that this was some redneck attempt of a remote start system?

[WarStryker13]

That sounds like the original ignition cylinder went bad and instead of doing it correctly, they just wired a new cylinder into the old cylinder and bypassed the anti-theft system.

Try a plain key without a chip in the ignition, if it works then you know exactly what they did. .

[l67ss]

^^^yup. I've seen the same thing on early fiero 3800 swaps

[lawadm1]

We used a key without the chip, and started no problem. Good to know...Thanks.