While taking a trip to visit some family the other day my cars steering lock unfortunately got stuck in the middle of the night after we stopped to use the restroom. I’ve only seen a handful of posts and videos about this issue. For anyone who may not know about this, if the steering lock actuator gets stuck, the car will be act almost completely dead. The key and ignition will do nothing, the dash will not light up, etc. You have to do a procedure with the lights and the brake pedal to be able to clear the steering lock code since the ignition won’t function, and only then will the car start again. After getting the car flat bedded to a relatives house I called a buddy over with scanning equipment to clear the code and the car is fine again for now.

My question is how should I go about disabling the steering lock? I’ve seen a video on a guy with an S6 who just cut one of the wires going to the plug, and came across a forum post where another guy had this issue with his Q7 and cut the wires as well, which effectively disables the steering lock and the car will continue to function normally without it. However the wires going to this plug are color coded differently on A8’s, so i’m not sure which wire to cut. I’m not against rebuilding the actuator, but I don’t have any equipment at the moment. Any suggestions would be much appreciated, I’m going to be out of town away from my shop and vcds for the next week or so. I’m hoping I can get this sorted out here with the limited tools I have so I don’t have any issues on the way back home.

Car is an 04 A8L 4.2

 

When I was having issues with mine, I investigated trying to bypass it but did not find a way. Yes, I saw all the videos with other chassis doing it but was not confident in trying it myself. I was fortunate in that my issue was a wire getting cut because of the way I routed the wringing when I installed my hand controls. I repaired the wiring and rerouted the harness hand no issues since. What code it you get? Most of the time it's one of the three micro switches inside the lock cylinder that go bad. You are so lucky that the only one I know of that repairs them are in NW Chicago. REPAIR Service - Electronic Steering Lock - Audi A8 / Porsch.

 

Check the key switch first. Easy to replace from multiple models of audi and no Vin coding. If your steering column actually breaks then you have to repair it and the Kessy at the same time. with original Kessy. Local guy did mine, not sure he is on this forum, but on Ross-Tech . I live close to him so it was easy when I had to remove the steering column for him to fix. Audi A4/A5/A6/A7,A8 Electronic Steering lock Replacement-77
I would swap the key switch first. It is competely dumb no key change, no coding just plug and play. 2007-2010 Audi A8 Porsche Cayenne Ignition Start Switch With Key 3D0905865H OEM for sale online | eBay