elec. issue

[martin owen]

have a elec. issue. was sitting at a stop light and smoke started comming out of steering collum. shut car off and when the smoke stopped, noticed that the wire from the horn was the wire that was burning. it burnt all the way from stering wheel to bulk head. i cut the wire at the bottom of the collum now i have no brake lights. the horn wire was not being used because there is a horn button on bottom of dash any help would be much apreciated

 

[Wietse]

Wire must have shorted somewhere in the column somewhere.
Not sure if the brake lights not working is related to this issue though.

 

[451Mopar]

have a elec. issue. was sitting at a stop light and smoke started comming out of steering collum. shut car off and when the smoke stopped, noticed that the wire from the horn was the wire that was burning. it burnt all the way from stering wheel to bulk head. i cut the wire at the bottom of the collum now i have no brake lights. the horn wire was not being used because there is a horn button on bottom of dash any help would be much apreciated

View attachment 499483

Need to find where the horn wire found a power source, because that was just a path to ground?

 

[Shorthorse]

Because somebody put a horn button on the bottom of the dash, I would suspect there was a previous issue. As mentioned above, its job is to carry a ground to the horn relay and it shorted somewhere in the column to power. As bad as it looks, it probably took some other wires with it. Looks like you're going to have to drop the column and inspect the column harness. Also, that horn wire (should be a black/tracer) extends to the middle bulkhead terminal and into the engine compartment harness. It would be best to check the entire route of that wire for additional damage.

 

[Nacho-RT74]

Question!

Did you have the brakes pressed when the smoke started?

If so, both ( brakes and horn ) run through the turning signal harness. Brakes light input is a white wire and is positive signal, black wire is horn and is a negative source. Both are sourced just when triggered from its switches ( horn or brake respectivelly )

Maybe the horn wire has being allways grounded/damaged ( hence the previous owner extra button ), but then another fail came out from brake light system into the turning switch assembly/harness, getting in contact with the horn wire.

Would be interesting have known if the short finished when you released the brake pedal or actually when you turned off the engine since the brakes lights are not related with ign switch really but straight from batt/alt system, so just releasing brakes should have stopped the short

 

[black64]

I would trace that wire down to see where it contacted an unfused battery feed because any short protected by a fuse would have opened the fuse and not melted the wiring.

 

[Nacho-RT74]

True! Or a bypassed fuse ( I have seen that! ).

 

[black64]

True! Or a bypassed fuse ( I have seen that! ).

You can't count it out especially if they put a horn button on the dash instead of fixing the original problem to begin with.

 

[Nacho-RT74]

I meant the fuse what protects the brakes and hazzard system, could have being bypassed so that's the reason why the short burnt the wiring.