I'm back after finally moving to another town and settleing in. I've had the 1989 XJS for a month now and have not started to tinker yet.

The first thing I wanted to do was to put the OEM steering wheel back on. The wooden one was too cheezy looking and not centered by the installer.

My problem is the horn. I see no place to plug the wire into the origional wheel. There is a 6 inch brass tube that neatly slides into the hole in the steering colum and has a plastic hex nut fitting to hand-screw it into place. The other end (now visable) has a single red wire and slip-on connector (female). There is no place to slide the connector onto the back of the steering wheel center pad where it is depressed for horn use. It looks like a simple ground wire switch because I don't believe its hot. When the pad is pressed, the brass backing of the pad touches the brass on the tube and wire fitting and completes the circuit and activating the horn (I think)...

I dont know if this long brass stem is part of the after-market steering wheel or origional fittings to use with the stock wheel.

Bottom line is, the horn works but I can not activate it via the center steering wheel push pad.

is anyone familiar?

 

The long piece with the plastic hex is OEM and must stay. The OEM wheel on my car had a contact that made to the brass centre of that hex. My aftermarket Motalita horn push required a wire to be soldered to the hex in order to make contact to the Motalita horn contact.

Check your OEM wheel and see if it will make contact to the hex centre if the soldered wire is removed. In any event, all that is needed is to find a way of earthing the centre contact of the hex when the horn is pushed.

 

It never occured to me that that red wire was added for the after-market contact button. It does look like an extension for the longer shaft on the wooden/Aluminum wheel. I will see if it looks like it will make contact without the wire soderd on.

The fact that that you confirmed the brass tube with plastic hex nut is a stock piece helps a great deal. Now I have a better understanding.

Stay on this thread with me. If it dosn't work, I will photograph the pieces that I have to work with and maybe you can help further.

Thanx, Ray