Horn contact repair

The horn wasn't working on the beater so I traced I down to a bad horn contact on my three spoke "comfort grip" wheel. Otherwise known as a three spoke "GS wheel". The issue on most is that the part that actually makes contact with ground rusts up. The rust prevents the contacts from grounding like they're supposed to. New horn contacts are readily available for around $25-$35, but don't waste your money. Here's a quick fix to get your original contact working again.

As you can see, this is typical of what your horn contact will look like once removed-


As you can see. it's pretty rusty. First thing we're going to do is carefully take it apart. To do this, we'll need remove the 3 plastic rivets that hold the contact together. You'll need a small hammer, a small punch or drill bit and a small socket to act as a receiver cup. You'll want to use the socket in this matter otherwise you'll damage the portion of the contact that holds the horn cap on. Tap all the small studs from the back and knock them out.


Once all 3 little studs are removed, you can pop the 3 rivets out. Once out, you will have these pieces. As you can see, one piece is a fiber gasket. Be careful with this as its very fragile. Especially the holes where the rivet passes through! These are the parts in order from right to left


At one of the car shows I went to, they handed out a sample of Evapo-Rust rust remover. So that's what we're going to used to de-rust our contact.


I took a small container and put all our metal parts in the Evapo-Rust. And just to be Capt Obvious, you don't have to soak the fiber gasket. Allow the parts to soak overnight



Remove then from the Evapo-Rust and rinse them off. As you can see, they look brand new with no traces of rust



Now re- assemble in order. Put all the pieces together- top piece is the thick retainer with the three ears. Next is the horn cap retainer, then the fiber gasket and then the lower retainer that has the right angle contact. Once all the pieces are together and lined up, insert the plastic rivets through the holes and then tap the three plastic studs in them.

The parts from the side stacked in order-



And finished! Literally took me a total of 10 minutes of time and zero money out of pocket. And the beauty is you retain your original GM part. After I put it together, I tested it with my meter and it is back to working. Good as new. Ready for another 48 years of service

 

Missing, is the video clip of the horn beeping.

In all seriousness, great tutorial. I love reusing OEM stuff and I love Evaporust.

On another serious note - you should consider making these tutorials in video form and uploading them to YouTube.

"How to ___________ on your Buick Gran Sport"

 

Good question Bill! I don't have a source but I know they're out there. Some of the Chinesium contacts on Ebay have large black plastic rivets you would find on a modern car, but the problem is that it interferes with the horn cap installation. I wonder if you could find some small plastic machine screws?

The original screws are Phillips head machine screws. If you have hex head on there, they're replacements