Steering Wheel Harness Issue

[mnetwork]

Recently weird things all happned at once to my car. My horn stoped working, but it's not the actual horn because my alarm still make my horn go off, and the cruise control buttons on my steering wheel don't work. Also around the same time my SRS light came on. I'm guessing there is some big wiring harness that goes from the steering wheel the rest of the electronics? Can somebody point me in the right direction? What is going on?

 

[wret]

There's a "clock spring" device that connects the various electrical inputs, horn, cruise, airbag, etc. It sits in the center of your steering wheel hub and has a coil of flat ribbong wire that has enough slack that it can be turned a couple full turns left or right. Sounds like your problem may be there.

 

[Spln_Hrd]

You have to have a steering wheel puller to get to this but once you get past that they are not bad to replace other than feeding the wire through the column sometimes is a pain but keep in mind it can be done!

 

[mnetwork]

Yeah, I'll have to figure out how to take this apart

 

[Defiant]

Recently weird things all happned at once to my car. My horn stoped working, but it's not the actual horn because my alarm still make my horn go off,

The alarm horn is both a separate horn and a separate circuit. Its working when your service horn isn't doesn't mean anything.
I don't know what sort of bad luck Spln_Hrd's had with wheels, but I've never used a puller in more than thirty years of working on junk. But if you need one, borrow it from AutoZone.

 

[97spydergs]

I never used a puller, just take off the big nut in the middle and pull.

 

[mnetwork]

Just wanted to give an update on this issue.. I was almost sure it was the clock spring, so I went to the dealer and bought one. Taking everyting apart was really easy, I used wheel puller which made it very easy. The hardest part sadly was getting the connectors apart because where they connect is hard to reach into, but after that all I had to do was connecting everything up and put it all back together. Very very easy. After all this I started the car and the horn worked, but my SRS light was still on. Fortunately, I did this with my friend at his job (he's a fleet mechanic) and we had a $8k diagnostic scanner and we were able to clear the airbag error codes. After that the light never came on again. I don't know why, but we had to manually clear the error for it to go away. But everything is done and working fine and I have my beloved horn back. Thanks for the help guys.

 

[wret]

Now that you have the switch working, get one of these:

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[mnetwork]

What is it,

 

[Defiant]

It's a truck-sounding air horn. And it's a good idea. DSMs are small and low.

 

[mnetwork]

haha.. I've thought about getting one of those a long time ago.. Probably will.. just another thing to taunt people with..