I'm going to make some statements that hopefully will put some perspective on this problem.

Automatic transmission C5's 2001 and later DO NOT have steering wheel locks at all. If your in that group there should be a collective sigh of relief.

Automatic transmission C5's from 1997 thru 2000 the control circuitry for the SWL unfortunately is flawed. GM is bypassing a majority of this group under TSB 01-02-35-008 and IMO a bypass should be used on all of them. The feedback circuitry used a separate latching relay instead of the actuator contact. This design does not give a true indication that the actuator received the control signal and correctly operated, only that a latching relay saw the signal. I have no idea why GM used a different circuit design for the A4's. If I was in this group and this problem gets resolved I would consider a retrofit to the manual transmission design.

Manual transmission C5's 1997 and later all have steering wheel locks and from what I see continue to fail even with the "fix" under TSB 01-02-35-008 which was nothing more than replacing the actuator assembly. If I was in this group I would use a bypass as a temporary fix and hopefully install the correct repair when it's available.

The only good information Ive seen as to where the problem might be is some good signal tracing that located a faulty connector. The same connector by the way that most bypass kits use, well one side anyway.

Thses are some of the numbers: (AP News Service). From 1997-2001 there were 131,981 C5's built and GM fielded 24,127 warranty claims on the SWL problem. Thats 18%! I don't know if I believe these next numbers, twenty-five crashes and 10 injuries from the steering wheel going to lock at 5-65mph. From a design standpoint it's hard for me to believe. PLEASE DON'T TRY THIS, but maybe someone reached over and removed the key while the vehicle was moving. Hopefully GM designed a safety interlock for this eventuality.

I hope what I've said is accurate.

LEC