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Subject:Re: Horn problem ( updated request for a vanagon tire jack)
From:David Beierl
Date:Wed, 15 Jul 2015 10:13:49 -0400

At 09:39 AM 7/15/2015, Dennis Jowell wrote:
>David, when I get back to the farm I will check out the Bentley
>diagram for the information. Interesting. I'm not to sure what the
>plastic cladding is.

The reference point for everything is the seating plane of the
steering wheel.  Black spacer from there rests on the upper column
bearing and shoves it down over a ribbed plastic ring which is seated
on a welded collar surrounding the shaft (which has two slots forming
the female part of the steering wheel lock, so it's very stout).  The
ribs get smeared off to the seating depth of the bearing.  Since the
upper bearing is inserted into the ignition lock assembly casting
which also supports the stalk switches and horn contact, this
permanently sets the spacing between switch plate and lower face of
the wheel which bears the rotating horn contact that is in permanent
contact with the fixed contact.  The horn button grounds the rotating
contact via a wire at the bottom of the column.  There is no wearing
part that can change these clearances.

The pinch bolt allows you to adjust how deep the wheel/column/switch
assembly seats onto the column tube which is mounted to the dashboard
and together with the slotted mounting of the tube itself allows you
to adjust how deep the pins at the bottom seat into the rubber
bushings of the short piece coming from the relay gear -- pulling the
wheel toward the driver increases clearance to the plastic coliumn
shroud and makes the pins seat deeper into the rubber bushings (since
they're inverted, their whole point being to disengage if the relay
gear gets pushed upward in a crash).

If you had the cladding you'd know -- it goes all around the sides to
match the GRP bumpers and has four holes at the four jacking points
that are too small to allow the regular jack to enter all the way
unless the bottoms of the holes are busted out which is not uncommon.

Yours,
d