Tom in Austin

Have been studying posts about ESL failure and repair and thinking about this system ... what if a person didn't care about the locking function? Is there a simple way to go around the mechanism? For example, I believe there's a steel pin that the motor drives into something to mechanically lock it. What if you took out the pin and left everything else there ... the motor and gears would turn, extend or withdraw the now-absent pin, and everything would appear to be correct to the electronics. The system would be effectively disarmed. Is that possible?

For me personally, I'm not very worried about the slight increase in risk of someone stealing my car because the steering column was not locked. I think the other anti-theft protections built into the car ... door locking, alarm, electronic ignition, etc. ... meet all my needs for security.

Adi-Benz

I thought the same but I think I disregarded it because signals end up being sent regardless, and so even if you remove the pin and reinstall, no signal means it'll still be stuck in the "off" position (can't turn car on) only advantage would be you could then move steering wheel

At least that's what I thought

cvx5832

The electric motor would still need to run to complete the gear cycle and trigger the microswitches, ergo that motor will eventually still burn out. And there’s not much more load in actually driving the locking lug. Since it’s spring loaded, it quietly finds its locking position whether the lug is perfectly aligned or not.

In other words you can go the SIM route or replace the motor preventively. Or you can wait like I did and just hope you can unlock it one_more_time when it does finally give up the ghost.