Ships from our USA and CANADA stock — no extra duties or import fees for US and Canadian customers
Marty’s 1997 Chevy Lumina: Two Ignition Switches, New Chipped Keys, Still Stranded
Marty Maize’s June 2015 story about his 1997 Chevy Lumina is the parts-cannon story: every component that could plausibly be replaced was replaced, each replacement worked briefly, and the car ended up one decision away from the scrapyard anyway.
A year of replacing the wrong things
“I have a 1997 Chevy Lumina, it has had security problems for over a year. I tried 2 new ignition switches, had to have new keys with security chips made to work with the new ignition switches, seemed to work for a little while and then the car would not start. I tried letting the key be on for an amount of time hoping that would reset the security system and that would fail.”
“This car has been a nightmare for the past year, it finally came down to either having a dealer fix it or scrap it. It was a good car except for the security system being the problem.”
Two switches and a fresh set of chipped keys is several hundred dollars spent restoring the transmit side of a system whose receive side was the actual problem. Each new part put a clean reading back within range for a while, then wear and the judging module drifted apart again. That “worked for a little while” pattern is the signature: it means the comparison is marginal, not that any particular part is bad.
The part they don’t sell at the counter
“Then I found your product on the internet, read the reviews and decided this was worth trying. Ordered the system bypass kit and am very pleased. I havent had a problem yet and can start the car with a key that has no security chip in it also no security light that stays on. Very easy installation and very quick response time to a question I had. Thank you very much for making a product worth buying.”
The detail worth underlining: he now starts the car with a chipless key. After a year of paying to have chips matched to switches, the chip stopped mattering entirely, because the module that used to demand it is out of the decision.
What was actually failing
The 1993 to 1998 Lumina runs PassKey II: a resistor pellet in the key, contacts in the cylinder, and a Theft Deterrent Module behind the glovebox doing the judging. New switches and new keys refresh the contacts and the pellet, but the TDM and the thin wiring between them stay original, and they are usually where the drift lives. That is why the parts-cannon approach buys weeks instead of years. The NEWROCKIES PRO Module retires the TDM outright, and with it the whole question.
If you have one of these cars
The same wiring covers the Lumina’s whole W-body family of the era: 1993-1998 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, Chevrolet Lumina, Monte Carlo, 1994-1996 Pontiac Grand Prix, 1995-1996 Buick Regal.
Related stories on the blog. Same wiring: Wendy’s 1997 Cutlass Supreme and Andrew’s Monte Carlo.
