steering wheel horn rebuild (1 Viewer)

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landtank

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Getting near the end of the of my FJ40 resurrection and down to the electrical system. First up is the fact that the horn doesn't work. Multiple issues here and first up was a badly corroded fuse block. There was no 12v at the buttons.

Read on line that lemon juice with salt warmed in a microwave worked well for copper fuse blocks so I gave it a try and was amazed at how easy it was to clean the block with that solution and a Q-tip.

Tore down the steering wheel to find additional problems with the buttons themselves.

Its an early 1980 with 3 spokes, each spoke has a button to push. That button is mounted of some spring steel and that spring steel has a small copper contact on the end. The end nearest the center of the wheel connects to 12v and holds the button in place. When the other end with the small copper contact is pushed that contact makes contact with a flat pad proving a connection with ground so the horn sounds.

The spoke at 3:00 has no contact in it, the spoke at 9:00 was worn considerably and the spoke at 6:00 looked just fine.

So I took some measurements and got on google to begin the hunt. About an hour or so later I believe I found a replacement. It's a flat top solid copper rivet. minimum order is 200 and I should have them in a couple of weeks.

I'll follow up then with how they worked. Here are some pics of what I'm working on.
contact.JPG
no contact.JPG
pad.JPG
wiring.JPG
 
I did the same, also with good results. But I also had to pull out the steering wheel and rebuild the contact in there.
 
So the horn, she works. What I bought was 3/32” x 1/8” copper rivets. I knew going in I’d likely need to drill the leaf springs but even at 3/32” the hole was too small and ended up drilling it to 7/64”.

I tried to stake the rivets similar to what the factory did but that was futile. So plan B was to solder them in place (sort of) and see how that works. The soldering seems fine and the horn now works.

During the research stage I thought that I had ordered them but when I went to double check I hadn’t (so I thought) and ordered more. So after spoilage I have roughly 395 copper rivets.

Let me know if you would like some.

The larger copper head is the new rivet and the soldered back side is how I affixed it.
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12D110A0-9654-4A51-B4D6-C94CA1B0A3E6.jpeg
 

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