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I've had a 14" leather
wrapped Grant Steering Wheel on my car for about 7 or 8
years now without a problem. The other day (10/2007) I
was about to turn left at a stop sign when I heard
someone blaring their horn at me. The car that had just
turned into the street across from me stopped and looked
back at me. I looked in my mirror and there was no one
behind me.................but a horn was going non-stop.
As I kept looking around I slowly realized it was me
honking, but when I pulled out and went straight, it
stopped. I have to admit that the new horns I put in the
car in the Spring are much more effective and
authoritative then the original Luca horns. So I
continued my drive thinking, no hoping, that it was a
fluke. But alas..........at the next stop sign, in the
middle of the busy Choate Prep School campus, I went to
turn right and off went the horn scaring a bunch of
co-eds and faculty. Ooops.......... time to pull over
and pull that fuse!
When I got home I pulled
the steering wheel and adapter hub from the car and
found a spring and a pile of copper dust in the column
hub. There was also a copper rod that was slightly bent
and obviously worn on the tip. It didn't take me long to
figure out that the spring is supposed to be held in place
over the rod by a "cap" of some sort so that tension is
maintained on the rod for it to make contact with the
copper ring in the column hub. Whew.....talk about a
run-on sentence!
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Copper Ring in
Steering Column Hub |
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Adapter, Copper
Rod and Spring |
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| Components to make horn
work |
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I called Grant's Customer
Service number and was put in touch with one of their
design engineers. He knew immediately what happened and
asked what I had used to lube the end of the
rod..............lube? I told him I was looking at the
installation instructions and there was no mention of
using lube..............after a pregnant pause on his
end he said, "anytime you have metal to metal contact,
you need to use some sort of lube. Oh. As it turned out
he hadn't designed the part so he had to refer it to
their Italy plant and, in his words, "they aren't too
good about returning emails. So, in the meantime,
I've come up with my own temporary fix as shown below.
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First up is to
drill a small hole in the end of the rod |
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Then a thin
cotter pin to hold the spring in place |
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Clip the cotter
pin and you're good to go |
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When I put it all back
together I used some white Lithium grease on the copper
ring on the column hub and, hopefully, we'll be good for
a few more years.
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