wiring help

[ira ashley]

I have parts from about 10 trucks in my 1-fixer upper truck
2-questions on wiring
1-I have a tilt stering with a single gray wire that goes were?
2-horn will not stop blowing + it has a relay beside the fuse box inside the cab that is getting red hot even with the horn un-plugged which is draining my battery. Whats wrong?
Ira

[Palf70Step]

You have a short somewhere that is keeping the current to the relay to activate it. Two guess. The relay is hosed or I would think it is a short in the column.
I think I would check my column first.

I don't have a tilit, so I dunno what the gray wire is

[CPNE]

I believe the gray wire is to light the shift indicator. It should go to the spade next to your dash fuse on the fusebox. That will make it come on when lights are pulled and also dim with dash lights. Someone should confirm this as I'm going from (faulty) memory.

[Longhorn Man]

CPNE, you are correct. i just hooked up min eon the longhorn.
On the horn issue, I would swap out that horn relay just becouse it is an easier step than tearing the steering wheel off and looking to see if the slip ring is grounded.

[ddsmith]

Wait a second. CNPE and Longhornmail, are you telling me that the shift indicator is suppose to light up. You know I thought it was from what I read but I couldn't find it on the wiring diagram I have. I think I heard something mentioned about fiber optics. Is that how this light works?

[Longhorn Man]

On tilt columns, there is a light bulb..on non tilts, it is a fiber optic cable.

[ddsmith]

Is it feed from the same place as described in the discussion on the tilt column. I'm just trying to figure out where to find the feed so I can figure it out. Is the light actually under the dash and feeds the indicator through a fiber optic line? My vette has fiber optic for several indicators that have a lens in the turn signal housing so when the turn signal light comes on the fiber optic cable feeds a light on the center console. It's strange that the LMC catalog doesn't show it or maybe I'm just not smart enough to find it.

[Longhorn Man]

The fiber optic cable is not made in reproduction, and I think GM stopped too, so junk yards and NOS is all you have.
The fiber optic cable on the non-tilt gets its light from the lamp that lights the speedo...the one towards the center of the cluster. From there it goes up the column under the metal cover on the bottom of the column...along with the turn signal harness. It then goes up through the column through the shifter collar and ends up in the pointer.
On the non tilts, all that lights up is the pointer, and it glows through the P RND21 lens.

[ddsmith]

Thank you very much Longhornmail. The information you provided is much appreciated and hopefully someone else will benefit from this as much as I will. BTW it's soggy here in Southern Maryland too. The only good part is it's not one of my days off. I hate when it's rains on my days off.

[ira ashley]

Thanks for the so far.
Changed the horn relay; was not the problem.
Does anyone have a picture of the slip ring inside the stering column?

[ddsmith]

Sorry, I hijacked your thread. Let's see if I can help out a little bit. I guess you could try taking apart the semi-circular shaped connector at the bottom of the column. This is where the 20gage black wire gets to the column. It then runs through the column to ground via your horn contact. If you disconnect this connector and the horn stops blowing you'll know that the wire is either grounded in the column or the horn contact is grounded. Once long ago I came up with a great idea to pop rivet the two sides of my horn contact together on my vette this in turn created a flow path to ground constantly and the horn would not stop blowing. I then used tie wraps to hold it together and no more horn blowing when it shouldn't. If the horn blows even when the semi-circular shaped connector is disconnected then the wire must be grounded between the horn relay and the connector. This is assuming that the relay is good and was hooked up properly. Basically the relay uses 12V power feed from a 12gage red wire. The 20 gage black wire allows the horn contact to ground the 12V which kicks the relay and provides 12V from the red wire to the dark green wire feeding your horn. Hope this helps out. If not come back with more information and I'll try and help you fix it.