Monday night driving home from a pistol class the steering wheel started making crunching noises and binding up. I hit the horn and got nothing. It was late and raining pretty good so I left it be. It scared me good a couple times on Tuesday, it hung up quite a few times and took some real effort to turn the wheel when it stuck.



Why did Dodge have to ruin a nice simple truck with complicated technology? What was wrong with the old way of getting power to the horn switch? I never had a problem with those!

OK, I feel better now.

 

So what exactly is the problem?

 

Oh, sorry. The clockspring is what gets power to the horn switch, and also allows you to have cruise control switches on the wheel. It's a thin ribbon cable on a coiled spring like in a wind-up clock. Mine got old and worn out and started binding the steering. I yanked it out and all is good, except my horn doesn't work and I have to manually cancel my turn signals. Dodge wants $91 for the thing, and I'm still trying to find a junkyard that will let me tear into a column - around here they want to sell the whole column.