Yep, fixed it. As it turns out, there are indeed two limit switches for the handle pivot. The switch I mentioned in my post was the left side switch but the problem was the right side switch.

The switch on the right side is hard to find but it's in there...I had to remove the bracket that holds the handle electrical harness plug to get to it. Switch was ok internally but the metal "spring" on the outside was no longer pushing the limit switch button in enough when the handle cam was in position to do so.

The cure was to take needle nose pliers and simply bend that spring back to it's original position so that the cam would properly engage the switch again. Works great now.

Now that I know what the problem was I feel a bit silly having mentioned the temperature aspects but apparently it was so close to engaging the switch that the termperature effected the metal spring by a few thousandiths of an inch enough to make the difference in engagement or not. But by the time I figured out the problem even the warmer temps no longer helped..it was to the point of never working no matter what the temperature. Please let us know if that was your problem as well once you work on it.