The civic starts, and runs, but only if the key is in position three. If it comes out of position three, the car cuts off.

It's definitely not the fuel pump, fuel pump relay, distributor, plugs cables, coil, starter or battery. I took the liberty of opening the ignition switch on the back of the ignition key cylinder to verify the part is in good working order, I can't find any fault in the ignition switch.

Any help would be wonderful.

 

Look on the side of you ignition cyl there should be marks 1 2 3(shown like this I II III) the car should only be running in the 3(III) postion. maybe i missread you'r post but it sounds like you expect the car to run/idle in 2(II) and 1(I). not the case two is the accesory postion windows sunroof stuff like that and one is for the basic radio.

 

yea, it cuts off in position two unless it's held in position three (the starting position).

 

ok so you have to hold it(in postion 3) for the car to actualy remain running ?

 

Yes.

 

Buy the electrical part of your ignition switch and replace the bad one. I've seen them sold on eBay for about $50.

 

So, I replaced the ignition switch, and now the car wont even turn over.

While taking the original part off, I noticed there was some extra cables that ran off to some other unidentified electrical components. The issue with the ignition switch is that the position two connector/cable is receiving no charge, so I'm assuming there is a ground somewhere, or one of these electrical parts that I cannot ID must be broken. *unenthused yay*

I can post some photographs, and if you can tell me anything that could help, I may just mail you some brownies. The good kind.

 

Did you test the ignition switch with a multimeter?