I was browsing the site for Pantera- Electronics and found that they had developed a new product to help with this problem.
The item is an ignition switch by-pass which replaces the factory strip connector with a 21st century engineered design product. For those of you fortunate enough to have any of the other Pantera Electronics products you are familiar with their quality.
The by-pass is beyond simple to install, even for me the mechanically challenged. The instructions covered every aspect of the install with plenty of pictures. It will take longer to drop and put back the steering column than to install the isolator. The isolator also eliminated my Mariah fan engine run on problem. This was another nice side benefit of the product.
While the column was down I decided to inspect the electrical side of the ignition switch. It was full of old dried up grease and needed cleaning up. There is an article on The Pantera Place site that shows this procedure.
http://www.panteraplace.com/page125.htm
After thoroughly cleaning up the electrical side of the ignition switch the key now pops back out. I can now toss out my emergency paper clip for retrieving the lock cylinder when I removed the key too quickly.
With the new ignition switch by-pass and a cleaned up ignition switch I have eliminated one of the nagging reliability issues that gave me a lot of concern. And the cost is less than $90 bucks.
A link to the Ignition Switch By-pass is below.
http://www.pantera-electronics.com/ingswtch.html
Jeff