Wiring horn button (1 Viewer)

[drohweder]

Her is what I got:

Stock 71 FJ40 colum (no cover) with an aftermarket Grant steering wheel. The horn button looks like it has a pre-wired ground to the steering column but no hot wire. Here doesn't seem to be a rotating contact so do I just have to put extra wire around the column to allow the wheel to turn without breaking the wire?? I am a bit confused. It remindes me of my old freesytle bikes that had the rotor around the stem so you could spin your handlebars and still have a front brake.--So How does it work for the horn button. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

 

[IDave]

Dan, there is supposed to be a cylindrical bit of steel that is a brush (11 in the figure from SOR). It fits through a hole in the steering wheel, and it slides against the rim of the upper end of the column, and is connected to one of the plates (5 in the figure) that fastens down the steering wheel via a spring. This, of course, is for the OEM steering wheel. Don't know what the Grant does to you.

 

[65swb45]

EXCELLENT explanation Dave! The only thing that I would add is that the wire on the 72 and older columns that comes up thru the middle is a constant hot;The actual worm gear provides the ground. The rubber grommet behind the horn button clamp isolates the hot from the ground and makes the button a 'moment' switch.

Most people with an aftermarket wheel just hook up a dash mounted button to make the ground contact. If you can find a substitute brush to make the contact from the wheel to the steel ring on the head of the column, then, assuming you can ground the grant horn button to the steering worm gear shaft, you can complete the factory circuit.

 

[Degnol]

On my '66 the horn button is an open ground that closes when you press it. My relay is aftermarket Delco but has two hot leads, one in and one out plus the ground wire from the button.
Ed

 

[cruiserwanted]

Not to hijack the thread or anything but I have a 71 with original steering wheel and when I push it down horn goes off but stays on I was going down the highway with the horn going on for like 10 minutes, feeling like the biggest moron and i am sure everyone felt like this . Any ideas how to fix this. Would this be enough to drain an optimun battery? Thank you sorry again for jumping in here. Thought as long as we are on the subject and all.

 

[rgentry]

Mark might comment on this but in my experience the "horn stuck" problem
is a result of the failure of the rubber gasket, part number 4 in the picture
above. I cut a new gasket out of some thin polyethylene sheet material
and no more stuck horn. As far as I can tell, the horn sounds when an
electrical contact is made between parts 3 and 5. Part 5 then sends the
contact down through the horn contact which rides on a slip ring that is
housed in the steering column. I left my top off this summer and now
my horn is not working very well. I think I may have some moisture down
in the horn contact area.

 

[Desertdave]

Not to hijack the thread or anything but I have a 71 with original steering wheel and when I push it down horn goes off but stays on I was going down the highway with the horn going on for like 10 minutes, feeling like the biggest moron and i am sure everyone felt like this . Any ideas how to fix this. Would this be enough to drain an optimun battery? Thank you sorry again for jumping in here. Thought as long as we are on the subject and all.

This is particularly fun when around July 4th you are on Hwy 5 in amongst a couple hundred Hell's Angels.

Oh, and back on topic, I recently put in a Grant Steering wheel into my '74, and the horn still works. All I did was ignore most of the instructions that came with the Grant adapter kit, and spend an hour studying all the parts and pieces. Point is, if you are having a problem, it's not bacause you can't follow directions, it's because this is one case where you don't want to follow the directions.

 

[drohweder]

so I got it all put together but no horn! I tested the gound at the wheel--good. Got power from the fuse box, I assume the relay is good and the ground at the horns are fine. I'm not sure which post on the hella supertones is ground and which is hot but either way it didn't work. So the problem has to be at the hot on the horn button. Either the horn button doesn't work or ther eis an inadequate contact at the coupler thing.

As is always the case with my projects....nothing goes together smoothly. Always seems like its the 2nd/3rd or 23rd try before is fixes itself! Anyone know what the brush that makes contact with the current transfer disc on the wheel looks like (by the way i am making up names of these parts cuase I don't know what they are called.)

This is how I rigged the connection between wheel and column: I took an standard 10g hoop connector with an insulate cover, cut off the hoop, had a small carberator spring that i cut down and ran over the stripped wire leaving 50% of the spring free and soldered the base in place. So the insulted (plastic) bottom with wire exiting wedges nicely into a goove in the steering column and the spring end makes good contact with the steering wheel.

Anything I am missing?

 

[CruisinGA]

you cannot assume the relay is good, they often go bad.

Not sure how you would test it though.