Cadillac & LaSalle Club Discussion Forum

Cadillac & LaSalle Club Forums => Restoration Corner => Topic started by: stzomah on September 11, 2017, 01:49:21 PM

Title: The Saga of the Neutral Safety Switch and the Blowing Horn
Post by: stzomah on September 11, 2017, 01:49:21 PM
I did a dashboard restoration last year and when I finished, I had a horn issue.  When I put the steering wheel together and turned the wheel, the horn would blow.  I disconnected the relay and planned to pull the steering column and replace the brass ring on the shaft.  There are some great articles on that here!

Yesterday I was putzing around with the hand brake switch and I my eyes focused on the NSS.  I read an article about the spring loaded horn button in the NSS.  I removed the bolt holding it on the column and took a picture of the wiring for reassembly.  I took the assembly to my workshop and disassembled and cleaned the unit.  I saw the prices of NSS’s on Ebay and was extremely careful working with it.

The horn button was in relatively good shape.  There is a good article on remaking the button that i read.  It was still round and had plenty of meat on it.  I cleaned it with steel wool and sprayed everything down with contact cleaner and switch lubricant.

I took my ohm meter and put the probe through the hole in the top of the steering column.  I found that only a section of the ring was making contact with ground.  It appeared that if I adjusted the NSS down toward the gear box a bit, it would miss the grounding section of the ring.

I stuck scotch bright in the hole and spun the wheel to clean the brass ring.  Did not use steel wool fearing metallic dust would be bad!  I remounted the NSS and used the ohm meter to detect grounding (better than the wife yelling at me about the horn blowing!).  I was able to move the NSS down and spin the spring loaded button to find a place where it did not ground out!  Success!

Aligning the NSS to provide backup lights, allow starting in N and P, and not blowing the horn took about an hour!  It works great!  Time will tell if the horn is really fixed.