Date:         Mon, 7 Dec 2009 08:19:01 -0800
Reply-To:     Richard Koerner <rjkinpb@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Richard Koerner <rjkinpb@SBCGLOBAL.NET>
Subject:      Fixed screeching Steering Wheel
In-Reply-To:  <86476e250912062100v4cf94bbfo1702b9de0547e18b@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

My van has 180,000 miles and about 15,000 miles ago developed the screeching (fingernails on blackboard) sound when turning the steering wheel.  I took off horn pad and steering wheel, cleaned up the horn ring (very good condition) with Scotchbrite pad, removed the dried up grease from the beryllium copper contact, and lightly re-greased things with dielectric grease.  Worked great...for about 5,000 miles, then the screech came back.  Repeated the same procedure adding a little more grease this time, but got about the same results...more screech after another 5,000 miles.

Upon closer inspection of the beryllium copper contact with a 5X eye loupe, noticed that it had worn flat, like a mesa in Arizona.  Pitted on the flat top, with surprisingly sharp transitions on each side.  So this time, I got out a small instrument file, and gently went to work on the contact, which I hadn't paid much attention to before; got rid of most of the pitted surface, and rounded off the flat top back to it's old self, albeit modestly thinner metal now.  Re-greased with di-electric...SMOOTH as silk now.

I suspect that there is some work-hardening going on at the contact area; these break off, embed themselves in the lubricant, and act as kind of grinding grit which produces the sharp edges and flat top.

So save yourselves $40 for the horn ring and $40 more for the turn-signal/horn contact by trying the above procedure.  Might buy you years of service, maybe decades.  All I needed to buy was the big socket to fit the steering column nut.  Then again, if you're going to keep the van more than a few more decades, might be worthwhile to buy the parts while you still can....

Rich
85 Vanagon
San Diego