The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay horn button (would this work?)

I would like to fabricate a new button for my horn, I have a loose grasp of how the horn was supposed to work, but because my column is pieced together from various model years making it function how it did stock is out the window. Here's what I have (pic 1&2). My goal is to get the horn to make a sound when I push the horn button in the wheel.

option 1: I figure I can fabricate a small mount for a modern button or micro-switch underneath the original horn button that the original would rest on top of and when depressed it would push down on the small switch I add.

option 2: fabricate a super thin contact plate that would sit inside the steering wheel around the hole for the shaft below the cup/spring that would act as a ground when the cup/spring is depressed, with a wire from contact plate to ground and cup/spring would likely have a wire soldered to the cup running to the horn relay, therefore the ground be completed when the button is depressed hypothetically.

What do ya'll think is the best option? also new ideas are very welcome

Can't you just replace the original? A microswitch might work but might be difficult to fit into that space. A momentary on/off push button switch (I have one here somewhere) might also work, but the original ought to still be available.

Like this switch...no idea what the contacts are rated for, but it might work since the horn by nature must be operated through a relay. You might need a relay with a coil requiring just a wee bit of juice, however. Like a Bosch style model.

These might work. One is Normally Open and the other is Normally Closed. Salvaged from a microwave. If you want them, shoot me a PM.

Not sure I follow your ideas exactly.

The way the original horn button is designed is that there can be NO wires involved. If you have wires, they will get wound up when steering wheel is turned.
In the original design a wire comes up the column to a combination bearing and slip ring. A plunger button rides on the slip ring, It's a spring loaded contact. It turns with the steering wheel. The rest of the parts are designed to tilt and cause a disc to make contact between the column shaft, which is grounded to the chassis, and the wheel, which contacts the slip ring, which has a wire to the relay.

Hard to describe it all on here BUT.... the bottom line is you do have two choices:

1. Buy a new correct column so that you have turn signals and a horn, as I have suggested in your other posts.
2. Mount a normal horn button on the outside of column or on the dash.

You are wasting your time trying to put a button inside the wheel.

wow thanks for all the quick responses, that's pretty much what I was thinking of, but I was pretty tired when I thought of it and I now realize that both options would require alot of wire movement as the wheel turns that would stress the connections.

I would love to make it "original" but the housing for the blinker mech is not original to the rest of the column. I bought the kit from LMC for the blinker and none of it fit at all. If I could figure a way to make it function like it did originally that would be preferable.

I'm still reading as much about the original horn setup as I can to try to come up with a way to do it that's closer to how Chevy/GMC would have done it.

but as you can see in pic 3 the horn spring bushing in the wheel doesn't line up with horn button in the blinker mech, and I"m still trying to figure out how I would get the horn to honk using the original button, (or a button in the blinker housing as opposed to in the wheel) I had thought of fabricating a plate that would lay around the turn signal canceling cam and use the hole for the spring bushing to have a solid arm that would depress the plate when pushed and in turn hit the button. only hang up on that is getting the plate to travel up and down evenly. so far I'm still brainstorming but option 1 is still on the table as a fall back, I'm pretty sure I can have some extra wire rolled up in the blinker housing to allow for the necessary travel as the wheel is turned but it will produce quite a bit of wear on those wires over time.

the closer to original the better, I guess I read more about how they set that up over the years.

Just to repeat:
1. Buy a new correct column so that you have turn signals and a horn, as I have suggested in your other posts.
2. Mount a normal horn button on the outside of column or on the dash.

You are wasting your time trying to put a button inside the wheel.

@bartamos - now that I"m more awake I see the problem with my previous ideas a new column is out of the question at the moment, even if I could find one out here chances it will work and fit my budget are low.
a button mounted on column or under dash will likely be where I land. Luckily for me nothing is a waste of time, time is all I got, and sometimes chasing silly ideas is a good exercise/ learning experience heck 1 out of 10 times those silly ideas will work and are innovative. As most of us know the glass is not half full, or half empty, it's simply twice the size it needs to be.

Does that piece in your second or third pic mount to the wheel or the column? If it's on the column, there wouldn't be any wires to twist. It looks like that might be the way the original was set up, as there's a wire heading down thru that piece (I'm assuming into the column). But it looks like that part you marked "Horn button" is actually a contact that runs on a slip ring instead of a switch. If that's the case, a microswitch there wouldn't work, unless there was some sort of a cage going thru the steering wheel that the horn button depressed to push the microswitch.
If you can find all the parts to put it like original that would be best.

that is the blinker housing it is attached to the column. the microswitch idea was to be installed in the steering wheel in my half awake half sleep ideas that won't work. I don't have a slip ring but was thinking of a way to make one work to use the original contact i was calling a button. I had thought of creating a thing similar to your cage idea with a ring that lays around the cancel cam on the back of the wheel and has 3-4 arms to depress it that are attached to the back of the horn button, therfore it would make contact with the ring/contact when the button is pushed

Given enough time and money, you could do about anything.
Is that the wheel that goes with the column? Or are you doing a mix and match?
Might not be hard to build some sort of slip ring and glue it to the back of the wheel so that contact touched it. Then you'd just need a connection to the horn button proper to ground the circuit when you mash the button.

my blinker mech housing is from a different time, and was gutted when I got it. If I could find a blinker mech kit that fit I'm still missing the little arm at the bottom that actually tells the switch at the base of the column what to do. The blinkers horn and brake lights are all so intertwined once you split one off into a separate unit it's very difficult to make the other two function as they should.

The more I read and look at it the clearer it is that I will need to run a button for horn separately as well as separating the blinkers/brakes.

maybe one day I will come across the proper column or have enough to buy an aftermarket kit like the ididit column. Until then it's silly ideas first then the most realistic method followed by the right way eventually.

wheel is the original 62' as well as the little collars below the blinker mech but I think the rest is from a different truck, the motor is from a 61 chevy so maybe some of the column is too, but the blinker housing is not 61' or 62' I looked on Ebay for one that matches to see if I can make it work but I cannot identify it for the life of me. I have thought of tryinng to buy the correct housing but it's a bit out of my price range at the moment.

I bought the LMC universal turn signal and will likely buy a horn button from the local parts store.

Use this setup:

thats funny I was just looking at that

decided to go with https://vixenhorns.com/product/vixen-horns-vxh1004-bull-sound-horn-with-pull-lever/ The more levers the better

Nice. Reasonable. Only 50 bucks from Amazon.