Well, I finally decided to bite the bullet and tear my tash apart for the 3rd time today to fix my "no start" with the key problem. It was a royal PITA to do too btw. The wires that go to the ignition switch for the pellet in the key are enclosed in either a black or orange rubber coating. Mine was black. T his coating is extremely hard. I had a hell of a time stripping it off without braking the tiny hair-like wires that were inside of it. They're probably a 25 gauge wire! (or smaller.) anyway, here are a few pictures of the work done for your viewing pleasure. (this is a Riviera dash torn apart, not the Bonneville incase you couldn't tell. )


The minimum amount of dash I had to disassemble to get to the VATS wires.


The mess of wires I had to sort through to find the correct VATS wire


The wires you have to use.. notice how tiny they are and they're enclosed in that hard rubber coating.


The Resistor soldered into place.. my VATS is now bypassed and it should work without problems now. (I'm hoping.)

I hope you tried to start the car before putting everything back together

there is alot to remove on the Riv

ohh yeah I sure did test it several times. The dash is still torn apart because i have a few other things to work on. Basically the entire top half of the dash has to be disassembled in order to remove the lower peices of the dash. It sucks!

well at least that it is fixed I feel sorry for ya having to tear everything apart