Steering box all done, fairly simple job to be honest. It helped that I had a replacement box with drop arm attached. I decided to leave the horn, the tab on the column is snapped and it seemed too much hassle as I have a dash horn. I will re route the dash horn someone fitted to a more convenient location, I have a few spaces available from my old air con system, defunct switches etc. Thanks for the help guys.
I fitted my new steering wheel which I'm very happy with. The steering wheel comes with a new horn button which has two tabs on the underside of the horn button. Plan A: I thought I would move my dash momentary switch and connect the wires to the new horn, it worked. I was very chuffed but reluctant to celebrate fully, it bugged me that the two wires would be twisting as the wheel turned.? The wires were threaded through each side of the wipers slot/hole (one on each side). As I expected one of the wires snapped when the wheel was fully turned despite putting lots of slack wiring inside the boss! As you can see in the photo of the boss,the two large holes are entry points for the wires, this confuses me, surely wires will twist and snap? Plan B: I'm going to re route the horn wires through the column then onto the underside of the new horn button, this means the wires will still twist but not shear off.....hopefully! Question: As I understand the existing column wire from steering coupling to the old horn button is one wire? If that is the case then why is the top of the wire brown and the bit that attaches to the coupling black? I've yet to take it out but I'm hoping to attach my new wires and pull them through, thus saving taking the steering box off again.
Would love to see how you sort this issue. the VW horn wiring beggars belief. What they were thinking god only knows. The broken tab issue seems to be very common. Lovely steering wheel by the way.
Failed unfortunateLy. I managed to reroute the wires through the column itself, this solved the cables snapping and twisting at the horn button end. Unfortunately the same problem is replicated at the steering box end, although you can leave a lot of slack, unfortunately after a few test turns, the wires snagged and snapped!! I will be mounting my dash switch in a more convenient place tomorrow. What were they thinking indeed!
VW saw the error of their ways and fixed the problem on later late bays. But if you find/replace the broken/missing tab on the bottom of the inner column you’d probably get it to work as VW intended, however, I don’t know how the horn contact mechanism on the new steering wheel compares to the original and it could be it simply isn’t compatible.
Well here is the final piece. Re routed my dangling dash switch horn button to a more discreet and smart location. See the new wheel and the black button at the top right of the photo, central and above the mirror. Absolute pain all that horn malarkey and trying to return it to original, waste of my time! Trouble is that now when I press my horn it may look like I'm giving the finger as well!!!
I looked everywhere with no luck unfortunately. Barring setting back to original of course which is a pain!
