[patrickt]

I just spent the afternoon replacing my "Multifunction Switch" on my GM car. How did I learn my MF Switch was bad? A friend told me my brake lights were out, but not the brake light in the rear window -- there is no sign off this problem inside the car. A moronic design. I have all the factory service manuals for the car and nowhere in the diagnostic tree does it ever mention the MF switch -- you have to find it on the internet. These are the three volume set bigger than the Manhattan Yellow Pages, but nowhere do they mention the MF switch causing the rear brake lights to fail. Sooooo, I stop off this week at the dealer to pick up a MF switch. I tell the parts guy what I want and he pulls it up on his computer and says "Holy Cow, you might want to try and find it on the internet since we want $525 for it." I thank him for his time and find it at RockAuto for $275. Same AC/Delco part in the box, but for $250 cheaper. Of course changing the switch out was a royal PITA. GM jams Torx screws in the steering column where you can't get to them without a special tool. No, I didn't buy the special tool, I used Torx bits and vise grips and the like to do it. And of course the damn ribbon cables run up under the dash where you can't see what you have to undo to plug it all back in -- it goes together like a computer ribbon cable in the motherboard, but you have to take this big square plug thingy apart to even figure out how to plug it all in together. Whoever engineered every single light to go through one monster switch in the steering column should be shot. Took me three hours, with breaks. I suppose a competent mechanic with the special tools could have probably done it in half that. GM basically sucks. I bet if I had dropped the car off at the dealer and said "My brake lights are out, will you fix it?" that bill would have come back around $1,000.