While driving on the freeway my cruiser's ('93) steering completely locked up allowing only about 1/4 " of steering. Luckily. no major corners on freeway and exits and side streets were all slight diversions until the last 2 rt. corners in my quiet neighbor hood. Each took about 15 minutes of "backing and filling" on the wide streets to get home and no one was parked on the street so I could just angle up to the house. There has been a pump leak but I checked the fluid and it was ok and there had been no whining. Subsequent messing around showed the original key i've been using wouldn't even unlock the transmission anymore much less start the car. When using the secondary key I dug out of the back of the junk drawer it started fine and the wheel was unlocked. ( While driving the key had not slipped out of the ignition.) I'm hoping that's the problem but of course am paranoid about driving it again. With this version of toyoto, if I replace the lock cylinder (a simple thing) will that fix the problem or do I also have to replace the locking mechanism in the steering column itself, not so simple. Can a very worn key in the lock cylinder lose enough contact to allow the column to lock. All the sites including Toyota state that a pump failure will still allow you to steer just with a lot of strenght required. This column was fully locked.
Thanks for help.
Thanks for help.
