[Pecosbill]

Ok, after trying unsuccessfully many, many times to pull the horn wire through the tilt column, I tried a new approach. That wire simply will not feed down through the tilt column with the connector on the end. The first pic shows the setup I tried using to pull the wire through. No dice.

When pulling the old wire out you must pull some else through to take its place. If you just pull the old wire out, you are toast. I mean, pulling out the entire steering column and dismantling it toast. So, what I did was I cut a long piece of twine, about twice as long as the horn wire and then some. Make a loop with the end of the old horn wire and twist it until it has only a small hole in the end. This loop is shown in the middle pic. Put a small piece of tape over the end of the loop so it doesn’t snag on something inside the column. Feed the twine through the loop, stopping at about midway down the length of the twine. Put the tilt column in the straightest configuration you can then gently pull the horn wire back through the column towards the steering wheel. Once the striping appears, disconnect it from the wire and cut the string where it was attached to the wire. You now have two strings passing through the column, just in case one string breaks loose from the new horn wire when you’re pulling it through the column. In fact, that’s actually what happened to me and I was thanking God profusely that He whispered in my ear to use two strings so I’d have a backup.

Take the new horn contact ring and snip the wire off about two or three inches from the end where it plugs into the dash harness horseshoe connector. As before, twist the end of the wire until you make a loop, then tie one of the strings to the loop. Again, I also put a small piece of tape over the end of the wire “twist” so it wouldn’t get hung up inside the steering column if I ended up pulling the loop backwards through the column.

Now feed the wire through the column while gently pulling the string at the opening in the column under the dash. It helps to pull it as straight as you can in line with the column. Once the wire is through, remove the string, undo the twist loop, and use a crimp connector to reconnect the piece of wire you removed earlier that has the dash harness connector on it. Plug it in to the second empty hole from the end on the horseshoe. The first empty hole is for a light in the steering column for automatic column shift cars.

I put mine all back together and the horn doesn’t work. I removed the emblem cap and shorted the plunger button to ground and I had a horn....sometimes. Gotta figure this one out now.