Horn intermittent - not the spiral cable

Could it be that the steering column is bent and not the steering wheel? I can understand how an electrical contact dependant upon the turning steering column would be disturbed or interrupted if the column was bent.

Is anything other than the horn affected? I don't know how the Toyota steering column is constructed but, I had problems with a Ford that affected the horn and some other circuits and it turned out to be something called a "multi-function" switch in the steering column.

Unfortunately, I do not have an electrical wiring diagram for the 97 Avalon and the factory service manual does not have information on the horn.

Check the fuse box under the dashboard and make sure the harness is solidly connected. Pushing on the steering wheel could be stretching something underneath.

Check the pins in the connecor from the steering wheel to the spiral cable and from the spiral cable to the harness and make sure they are not loose or bent. Check the horn switch itself and make sure it is not bad. Check the horn fuse and make sure it is solid in its holder.

Are any aftermarket accessories installed in the car like GPS, security system, auxiliary power, etc.?

I doubt if the steering column is the source of the ground for the horn because most of the column and steering components are isolated with rubber from the rest of the chassis. More likely, the circuit for the horn switch is grounded at the horn relay.

The person at the dealership was saying the steering wheel and even discussed how much it cost because of the air bag. A bent steering column would make more sense, but hopefully this is not the case either :)

Thanks!

Thanks for the things to look at, I will do this.

We checked the pins in the spiral cable and they all seem to be fine. We did numerous tests on the spiral cable and it seems to be ok. The same with the horn switch. The steering column does seem to be the source for the ground. It is connected to a metal frame in the steering wheel and this serves as one side of the horn switch. I shorted the steering column bolt (that holds the steering wheel) to the car frame using a jumper cable and the horn worked every time.

I also did a ohm test between the steering column bolt and ground. It was Open until either I pushed up on the wheel firmly or turned it from side to side (the same as needed to make the horn work). When I would do this, the steering column would show as being grounded.

So, I am thinking that the steering column should always be grounded, but for some reason its not unless moved in the right area.

There are not other aftermarket items added. Nothing else on the steering wheel other than the airbag and horn. All the items on the column such as wipers, cruise control, etc all work fine. Possibly they rely on a different ground than the column.

Thanks again

The steering column would take a pretty large force to bend. The steering wheel frame is probably a little easier to bend or warp.

If that is the case, the easy solution is to run a ground wire from the column to a good ground.

You're welcome!

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote in news:1126967641.048111.81000 @z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

run a scab ground to colomn and kiss your 500 bucks goodbye, i would find a dealer that doesnt do hi dollar repairs on a hunch. IOW, sounds like a ripoff.........kjun

Ok, I got it fixed. Most likely it was not the spiral cable in the first place, but this is apparently the cause of this type of problem most of the time.

I took it back to the dealer last week and showed them that the steering column was not grounded (and nothing to do with a bent steering wheel or spiral cable). Since the spiral cable work was still under guarantee they agreed that they would take a second look. They attached another grounding cable to the steering column and this still did not fix it. After digging around more in the column they found that there were some bearings that were rusted. Apparently the bearings serve as the column ground rather than the grounding straps connected to the outside column area. They cleaned up the rust and the problem went away!! They didn't charge me for this. So, it is finally fixed and happy now that they came through and got this annoying problem finally resolved.