You can't just whip the plate off without breaking the insulating ring. Quite a bit of dismantling of steering column is required. Wire from horn onto tab inside steering column at the bottom makes column outer effectively a wire. Press horn connects column outer to brown wire down inside of inner column, through the hole in the steering coupler with ring terminal on coupler bolt on the part of the coupler attached to the steering box (earth). So making column outer live sonds the horn? I can't see how this could happen if the horn worked ok before. The only connection that can twist to and fro without breaking is the steering box and that's definitely earth or -12v
If you dab 12v onto the column and horn sounds, then it follows there is a circuit from column to horn and then from horn to earth. The only time the outer column should be live is when the 12v have already passed through the horn and on their way to earth.
So to save faffing about with trying to connect it up in a impossible place could i just self tap the live feed from the horn to the base of the column inside the cab?
You see the white thing on the column? - That was my horn button. All back to stock now though beep beep. I completely dismanted my column to do it.
Well blow me down. I'm assembling a bus for a customer and the horn doesn't work. After a quick shufty I saw the connector has pulled off the tab. This is really hard to get at with everything in situ. While I remember what I did... Prise off the horn button (just the plastic bit). Disconnect the brown wire from the horn ring. Off with the steering wheel. From previous experience this could be the hardest bit. No need to unscrew the horn ring and loose the springs. Off with the stalk/switches (2 screws). Remove the two screws holding the plate to the floor. Disconnect battery. Turn ignition on to retract the steering lock Shimmy the outer column up. The plate and plastic insulator come up with it. The cable goes through a clip under the cab floor - unhook it so you have more slack. Put the connector back on the tab. Reassemble it all. It only took 1/2 hour or so. I took a pic of the offending tab on the outer column but left the camera in the bus. :
