Monkey's Uncle

The Procedure

This is really easy on the e46 – here’s a quick writeup covering how to replace the ignition switch.

Symptoms:
Key is difficult to turn.
Car will not start with any key (starter doesn’t turn)
Steering wheel buttons work intermittently
Cruise control disengages randomly

Disconnect the battery.

Pull the wheel fully out and down, then lock into place.
There’s a plastic screw on the top of the steering wheel cover that needs to be removed. Be careful as its not difficult to strip out the head of this screw.  There’s also an insert the screw goes into – remove that and put both the screw and the insert off to the side.

Look underneath the wheel and you’ll see a trim piece that goes down and around the pedals.
You do not have to remove this piece, it just clips out of the way to give you enough room.
Pop the front part of this piece out of the clips.

Now look at the trim on the steering column – it’s in two parts – a top and bottom.
On the bottom, there are two push pins that can simply be popped up and into the steering column.
You should now be able to pop the column apart – it’ll take more force than you think.
With the trim column loose, release the tilt wheel lever and remove the bottom column only.
The two push pins should stay in the trim piece you just removed, but be certain you have both; they’ll be needed later.

With the trim column out of the way – this is what you’ll see.

the ignition switch is the big black box right in the middle of the photo.
the connector will come out after you slide the lever on the connector.
there’s just enough room to disconnect the switch.  now, with the switch disconnected look for two set screws.
in the photo below, they are the red dots

loosen the screws, there’s no need to take them out all the way. these are very short screws, without a head. only a few turns of each is necessary to get the switch out of the steering column.

once loose enough, you can remove the switch by just sliding it out of the column.

here’s a shot of the new and old switch.

make sure that you set the plastic insert on the new switch to match the old switch.
installation is, as they say, reverse of removal.