steering column grounding

[ornithology]

hey gang!

my horn has almost never worked, and while attending to the ring, contact brush, relay, horns, etc.
as well as trying to get my shifter display illuminated, i seem to have an intermittent grounding issue in the column. in some wheel positions, i have loud horn contact, but then it is completely gone a moment later, even in the same position.

and once i got the shifter indicator lit up, it went out again and took the dash lights fuse with it.

how does the grounding in the swing-away column work, and is there a known issue or workaround?

cheers.

[Karl]

G'day ornithology
If you have a look at the https://www.vintagethunderbirdclub.net/ ... hp?t=20299 and scroll down you will see a wire that goes around the rag joint.This could be at fault. Also there is a grounding wire from the steering box to the body as the steering gear is rubber insulated to the car, this may be missing.

Karl.

[ornithology]

thanks, Karl - i actually found that topic while searching the subject here, and alas i did the rag joint
job a few years back, and checked continuity with the wire afterwards. it's one of the few areas of the column that i know was done right .

i appreciate the tip about the steering box ground strap. i had a guy replace the rubber mounts on the box a few years back - maybe he missed the ground strap.

although the horn didn't work before that was done, either.
the sense i get is that there's something intermittent in the column...?

cheers.

[Karl]

Could be a broken wire inside the column. When I did my steering column the wires were in bad condition. They were brittle, some were short and had been repaired a number of times over the years.
The trouble is there is not much room inside to do anything.
Karl.

[ornithology]

Could be a broken wire inside the column. When I did my steering column the wires were in bad condition. They were brittle, some were short and had been repaired a number of times over the years.
The trouble is there is not much room inside to do anything.
Karl.

did you pull the column to do the work?
i'm wondering if it's easy enough /helpful to pull the column and check the shaft for grounding,
examine/replace some wires in the bundle, etc.
i've seen the steering shaft R&R in the 62/63 shop manual, but can't quite picture it...

cheer,
eric

[Karl]

G'day.
I did pull the steering column out. I did this when I had the steering box overhauled. I suppose it was easier to access everything at the same time.
I stripped the steering column down and cleaned & painted it. I thought the wires would of been a problem to replace but I soldered the new wires to the old ones so as I pulled the old wire out it pulled the new wire in. I did this one at a time. From memory it wasn't as bad as I thought.

I did make up a test bench of sorts. While the steering column was out I plugged the test bench to the wires at the bottom of the steering column and ran it through what it is supposed to do just to make sure everything worked. Just as well I did because there was a short in where the indicators were. It was easy to fix the problem whilst out of the car.
The two switches are for the power for the stop lights and parking lights. I also mounted a cheap buzzer to simulate the horn.

[ornithology]

^^^ very cool test rig, Karl!

interesting development - we took a closer look at my rag joint, and it turns out the 12-point bolt
seems to be stripped (on the steering box side).

i had been getting continuity across the joint with a multimeter, but perhaps
even though it is still mechanically making contact (for now...) it may not be a
good electrical connection?

meanwhile, not having an easy time finding the reasonably priced steering coupler hardware...