Warning: long message of minor woe, not unlike the snake gas tank saga.
Vermont has auto inspection. It's the only thing about VT that has ever
made me long for Illinois. (When I lived there, there was no inspection.
Knowing IL, there probably still isn't.) Oh, well, count my blessings.
It is annual now, used to be semiannual. I sold my Alpine many years
back because inspecting three cars 2x/yr was a pain.
Anyway, this is the month for Kermit. Most service stations here have
lifts with octopus arms that seem designed to dig into the bodywork, so I
hoped to find a place that would inspect him without lifting him up. The
only one I found was the station near my former home 20 miles away which
was familiar with the car and willing to bend the rules.
So last night, I decided it would be well to make sure the lights and such
worked. Everything did, except the horn would only blow with the wheels
pointed straight ahead. I suspected the spring loaded widget that
connects the button to the contact ring was not making contact. (The
widget is a hollow plastic tube with a spring in the center and contacts
on either end, which are connected by fine wire. The widget connects the
button to a contact ring on the dash column housing, and the spring ensures
contact despite variations in the button/ring spacing as the wheel turns.)
Off with the button, out with the widget, which proves to have a broken
woven wire in the center. I don't have a stock of ultrafine woven copper
wire, so strip some 22 gauge. It's an egermency; I have an appointment at
8:30 a.m. I fiddle for a considerable time, to no avail, and the
remnants of ultrafine are getting shorter and shorter. I soon decide it
is new widget time, if I can find one. For tomorrow, I stuff the widget
with some wire strands and hope the spring will link the contacts even if
the wire doesn't.
Back to the car to insert the widget. As I inserted it, the lower contact
(which wasn't firmly connected to the other) fell out of the widget, down
the hole, and disappeared in the space between the wheel and the contact
ring. Now I have to remove the wheel. Luckily, I had read the thread on
removing MGB wheels from their splines. The trick works on Bugeyes, too.
Thanks, people.
I retrieved the contact, replaced the wheel, and reinserted the widget,
this time the other end first. Success. Now install the button, and...
nothing. OK, lets think. Remove the button, and test it with an
ohmmeter, ok. Ground the widget to the steering shaft, horn works. Only
possible problem is grounding the button to the wheel. For a few moments,
I consider jumpering the contacts with a piece of coathanger wire when
asked to honk the horn, then quick stuffing the button in before the
inspector sees the trick. No, I haven't enough manual dexterity to pull
it off. Let's see, a little segment of wire on the button assembly has to
contact an aluminum insert in the wheel. I wedged some rubber behind the
wire to force it out, inserted the button, and *it honks*! But only when
the wheel is straight ahead. 2 hours, and I am back where I started, and
pretty glad to be there.
So I made sure the wheels were straight ahead when asked to blow the horn,
and I have a new sticker. Anybody got an intact widget he or she is
willing to sell?
Ray Gibbons Dept. of Molecular Physiology & Biophysics
Univ. of Vermont College of Medicine, Burlington, VT
gibbons@northpole.med.uvm.edu (802) 656-8910
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