Land Rover horn button bracket respray and clocking the steering wheel

 12 July 2023

   A couple of days ago I finally decided to clock my steering wheel. It has been 1 or so splines off since forever. Just annoying when I want to see the temp gauge whilst driving. It is a minor thing to do. 

     First taking off the steering wheel center and using a hole punch I marked where the current position was. Undo and pull the clamping bolt out and wiggle the wheel off. Set it aside.

    This is when shipfitters disease sets in. I've been wanting to respray my horn push bracket part # 271496 for about a year and now looked like a good time. Soooooo, it takes a 7/16" wrench to undo the clamping bolt on the rear, but very tight quarters so I used a folding ratcheting wrench to work around the wiring and get it off. That is when I found out the wires went through the bulkhead and an easy disconnect  I was hoping for, well, wasn't.

   I had to find a tiny screwdriver and undo the clamping screws on the side of the button which held the wires.

 After that I decided to disconnect the battery to prevent accidental grounding. The simple job kept growing. Once the wires were out I pulled the bracket out and going into the "shop" removed the push button.

  Here i realized the button was held on with machine screws and nuts. To me it made sense to tap the holes and just use machine screws. So I found that my 10-32 tap would fit and I did the job.

 Are you ready? The job got bigger... I had to drill the holes in the button larger, to 3/16". 

When I test fitted the button base the screws went in but it was so tight it was slightly cocked so I redrilled 1 hole to 7/32" . Now it would screw down evenly.

Since it was opened up I took the opportunity to wire wheel the copper connections inside the button.

After that I set about cleaning the bracket, first with a wire wheel and ending with a hand sander. That was followed by 2 coats of Permatex rust convertor and 2 coats of Duplicolor Granite as I did not have any black.

Some day it will get black.

Once dry it was time to shut this complicated job down! I decided to make the job grow again....using spade connectors I hid them behind bracket for a quicker removal next time(for paint remember?) I set them up so the wires won't get mixed up. Then I set the button in place and found out the new screw heads were too large to go past the "button" part.....The solution was/is to take the button apart by accessing the screwnut on the underside and loosening it enough to wiggle the screw head past the button. Argggh, it was at this point I realized I needed to drill out the other hole in the button base to 7/32". Retighten the center screw and line up the mounting screws and I found out I have an uncle Robert.

Following that the steering wheel was aligned, hopefully in the right place, and the clamping bolt in pace, battery reconnected. I'll find out how I did the next time I drive it.