During the Safari Rally last month, we had some electrical problems (amongst other things), the Electric windows, dash lights, speedo, tacho, and indicators stopped working intermittently for a while, and now not at all. Before the rally we had Autronics installed, and wired in spotlights, these worked fine throughout the rally, and are still working fine.
Also at one of the services I couldn't turn the car off, I turned the key to off, and pulled it out, but it kept running as if I hadn't done anything. I stalled it to stop it, and it has been starting and stopping fine ever since.
Do you think these two things are related? I am about to go over all of the wiring that we have done, but the Ignition has got me stumped.
Cheers for any ideas,
Wavey.

I am sure there will be lots of theories will come forward, but one thing you should
be careful of when checking the wiring is the voltage across various wires. Sometimes
it is tempting to just check if a wire (ignition for example) is live or not without paying
attention to the voltage.

Another way of putting it is this... Most of the time the "run" from your ignition
or even accessories should be at 12v. However due to some wiring faults and also
the insertion of diodes (for turbo timer for example) can cause a volate drop across
these wires.

Specifically this can cause an issue with the voltage that some devices switch on at.
For example, some accessories may switch on when the line goes above 10v. and
other when it goes above 9v.

I had a weird problem where accessories would come on/off, includin the dash lights
etc because I had a weird votage drop across the run wire from the ignition. The
volate was high enough that the ECU wanted to let the car run, but for other things
it was too low and they would stop/start with a mind of their own.

Its a long, shot, but something to keep in mind when you're getting down and dirty
with the multimeter. My problem ended up being some fried diodes that where causing
a bigger and bigger drop the more they died.

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It does sound like an ignition switch problem, as all your accessories stopped working.
Do the basics, make sure battery terminals are tight. Check all your fuses
You really need access to workshop manuals, then trace back the power supply for whats not working.

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01 WRX (STI badged)
2010 XR5 Focus
06 Impreza Hatch 2.0i