Ignition switches, how they fail Options

[porschetub]

Had one fail in my 914,there seems to be a common failure point around the top casing that fits to the main assembly,this design is the the same for early Golf,944,T 1 and T2 aircooled Audi and I would expect many other in "the family''.
The return spring mounts via a tab on the spring into a hole in the top assembly,repeated use causes the area to crack.

The result is that the green plastic centre section loses tension and pops upward which in turn causes the metal wiper plate inside the switch to make a poor contact as it moves through its arc.

The end result of this poor contact is complete or partial failure,the crack in the housing shown in picture 2 is from my early 944 switch this was enough to stop injector pulse due to insuffient power to my ECU.
I pulled a known bad switch from another VW I had and found no crack in the housing but the contacts inside were all gummed up as the grease had gone bad and the contact pins were oxidized,cleaned it and it worked in the 944 till the correct replacement arrived.