If you’re a C5 Corvette owner, you have heard of this issue. You get in your 97-04 Corvette, ignite the engine and its starts, idles, runs perfect. No issues. Then you drive away, and anytime you get over 2MPH the car dies on you. Starts right back up, but dies. The dash may also have a message coming across about the steering lock malfunction. Now, if you truly have the lock pin issue at hand, the steering wheel will not turn either, but that's beyond this article. If you're lucky enough, like most, you can simply edit the tune file so the car is perfectly drivable and will not die at 2MPH anymore.

To fix this issue in your C5’s tune file, all you need to do is head into the System Tab and take a look in the General Tab. You will notice there that you have an area that says Column Lock. This is your issue. Notice the speed limiter when it sees an issue? Yep, 2MPH. So basically, if the car notices an issue it will limit speed to 2MPH in a safety mode.

I cannot count the amount of times I have seen this issue, including all three of the C5’s I have personally owned. Nothing worse than being a tuner heading out for a cruise with the family, park for some food, and come back out and your own car won’t move. It’s a pretty rough feeling knowing you could have fixed the issue, but naturally you're stranded in a parking lot without your tuning tools. 

So it’s as simple as this in the tune, adjust that to a limit you should not hit. In most cases I use the max number. Notice here I put 255 in this box, but you can decide your number. So now, the PCM will not shut the engine off for this issue unless the car is above 255MPH, which surely is not going to happen, I mean after all this is still a Corvette, not a Mustang that could actually reach that speed.

Save the tune and load it in now. Voilà! You can drive over 2MPH, even if the message is on the dash. Now, is there more to this? Sure! If there is a problem with the lock itself (in a fair amount of cases, there is no issue), you may have to fix that also. This will get you going, driving, and issue free. On all of my personal Corvettes, the limiter has been deleted immediately after the single time I left myself stranded. Won’t be doing that again!