Of course there is never a dull moment around here, especially when it comes to the cars. This time the Monte Carlo wants to take the stage. One day while driving to the job the horn gave a chirp. I messed with the horn button a little to see if it was just sticking or maybe shifted over where it might've made contact for just a brief second. This of course didn't last because as I further made my way down the road the horn started sounding off for even longer periods of time.
Now the bearing in the steering column is messed up so the steering wheel does have some wobble to it and it seemed like the wobble was contributing to the horn acting goofy. It was kind of embarrassing because I could only imagine that people around me were wondering what the hell is wrong with this fucker in this old car always blowing his horn at whoever. Finally it got to the point where the damned horn kept blowing and I had to pull over to address this shit. I tried working the steering wheel and had no luck, I tried to see if I could identify the fuse for the horn and had no real luck with that either, the identifying markings were faded, couldn't see them at all. I popped the hood to see if I could unplug the wires from the horn as well. At the spur of the moment I couldn't tell how the plug was made to disconnected so after getting tired of hearing the horn blaring and knowing that I had to hit the road to get to the job I yanked the wire out from the horns in a fit of rage. I made it to the job without incident and planned to look at this issue the next day. The first thing I did was fix the broken wires to the horn. After putting my eyes on the plug under more rational circumstances I was able to see how the plug comes loose so I can disconnect the plug easily if necessary. Of course I had to leave the horn unplugged while I figure out what was up with the horn button. Upon pulling apart the steering wheel cap I did find that the nut that holds the wheel was loose, so for all intents the only thing keeping the steering wheel solid on the steering shaft was the three bolts that hold the conductor plate to the column through the steering wheel. These bolts allow the conductor plate to move freely enough to be pressed against the surface of the steering column to complete the circuit to activate the horn. I went ahead and tightened the nut up then reseated everything in the steering wheel/horn button setup so it would hopefully work. One of the things I did look at while hooking things back up was the single wire that went to that plate I mentioned before. I noticed moving it around a certain way completed the circuit. I had to reseat that wire good enough that it wouldn't move excessively and make the horn go off yet again. I hooked everything back up and so far, so good, the button moved like it needed to and returned to its standby position. I even moved the wheel and couldn't make the horn activate so maybe this crap is fixed, maybe.... NOPE! After the next day I made it about 3/4 of the way to the job and the damned thing started chirping on me yet again. More than likely that one wire I was farting around with before is shifting excessively and shorting on metal making the horn go off. Rather than fuck around again I ended up pulling over and this time because I knew how to unplug the horn I was able to do that quickly and be back on the road with no issues. The only thing I hate about this is the idea that I'm caught between a couple of decisions. One is to go bootleg or cheesy or whatever term you may use to describe the half assed shit we tend to do to make something work on the fly, and hook up an external horn button somewhere and just wire things up like that and say fuck the horn button in the steering wheel. The second option is to repair everything in the steering column, that includes the shitty shaft bearing and try to see if any of the other stuff that pertains to the horn button setup may need replacing. I would really love to just fix everything correctly but as we all know time and money issues can have us needing to get something done but unable to do it the right way in a timely manner so we end up going the shitty route, just to get something working again and usually we end up just leaving it that way because face it, no matter how shitty something looks, its the results that matter most when it comes to this improvisation thing. Only time will tell but in the meantime, the MC has no damned horn....
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