Vios Key Stuck in Ignition!!! [FIXED]

 My wife's Vios is nearly 1 year old, and already it's giving me some minor problems from time to time. The latest one happened last Friday. Tried to get the key out of the ignition, but try as I might, it just wouldn't turn all the way anti-clockwise for the key to come out. Now this is a pretty funny situation. This basically meant that I can't go anywhere and park my car in public. Sure, I can lock the car with the spare key, but this is just an open invitation for someone to break my window, open the door and drive off.

Representative image (but you get the idea....)

The Toyota service center was not open on Saturday, so for two days, I had to park the Vios right inside the porch, and block it with my Myvi and Civic (better to be safe than sorry).

Well, managed to send the car to Toyota to check today. Guess what, they weren't really surprised, because they've encountered a similar case before. After hearing the Toyota people talk this way, you can't help but wonder how many more common problems they know about, but aren't telling anyone....

Anyway, they estimated a repair time of ~2 hours, not counting the waiting time. Since it was just 9.00am, and I'd have to wait until nearly 10am for someone to send me to my office, I took the option of walking instead. My office wasn't really far, just ~1km away, which took me around 15 minutes of brisk walking to cover the distance.

Unfortunately, my old tennis shoes had just reached their end of life halfway through my hike. The sole of my right shoe was literally dangling off! Not so good when this happens in the middle of the journey. Luckily, I managed to find a piece of string on the road, and jury-rigged a temporary fix by tying my shoe back together so I could walk the rest of the journey. At the office, I looked around for some industrial strength glue. Unfortunately, the product that used the Loctite glue had already been obsoleted, so I managed to get my hands on some UHU glue equivalent. Now, this wasn't the ordinary UHU glue that you buy from the stationery store. Being the industrial type, you actually need to mix it with a hardener so that the entire mixture can actually dry. I found out the hard way as ~2 hours later, my shoe was being loosely held together with a wet gel!

My colleague Juliyana managed to loan me a pair of her slippers (which were 2 sizes too small, but I had to make do with whatever I could get my hands, uh, feet on).

The sole never really stuck onto the shoe, and came off after taking a few steps. So, I walked with my "sole-less" right shoe to the car park, where I got a ride from my cousin, Melissa, back to Toyota. It seems that they were right. A wire from a sensor that detected the gear was in the "P" position had come loose, and this prevented the lockout mechanism on the ignition socket from releasing the key. They had to disassemble the entire center column to fix this. Fortunately I wasn't the first, so they knew exactly where to look. While I was at it, I did ask the SA if there was anything that could be done with the sound coming from the rear suspension (there is a krak-krak sound every time someone gets in or out of the rear seat, but no sound when the car was moving). He just told me that all Vios seems to have this problem, and even affects Altis too. It's because of the separate drum mechanism of the handbrake that slips when passengers get in or out of the car. Looks like we have to live with this one. Sigh.... :(

So I managed to get my car back at 12pm, just before lunch. First destination from there? Back home, of course, to get my usual working shoes!