Horn and Steering Wheel Controls not working

Hello all,

I bought my ’05 a few months back, and after a long rebuild process, it’s finally become my daily driver. I was cruising along a busy suburban road the other day and a couple of dogs started doing the little “I’m about to run out into traffic” thing, so I went to lay on the horn to scare them away from the busy 6 lane road. Turns out my horn doesn’t work. I’ve also noticed that the steering wheel controls don’t work at all. I’m curious if anyone else has run into a similar issue. With the steering wheel controls I had assumed that maybe a previous owner had an aftermarket CD player and forgot to hook them back up when he swapped it back to OEM, but now that I know the horn’s not working I suspect it’s something else. I have NOT had the recalls done for the airbags, but have been meaning to do that. Cruise control works fine, and my emergency flashers (on the steering column) also work.

Probably not related, but the master window controls only sporadically work with the auto-down feature on the driver’s side too. I have a new master control module to install this weekend to see if that fixes that problem, but I’m guessing it’s cut wires in the door jamb boot, which I’ll get to when I start on the audio install.

Has anyone run into this horn/steering wheel controls issue before?

Thanks!

Meter the plug for the horn while someone presses it. If it doesn't show 12v, and all your fuses and relays are good, then the issue may be in the clock spring of the steering wheel. This may also be the issue with the steering wheel controls, because with the factory radio in, if it's plugged in then so are the steering wheel controls. It all comes through the same harness I believe.

justin13703 said:

Meter the plug for the horn while someone presses it. If it doesn't show 12v, and all your fuses and relays are good, then the issue may be in the clock spring of the steering wheel. This may also be the issue with the steering wheel controls, because with the factory radio in, if it's plugged in then so are the steering wheel controls. It all comes through the same harness I believe.

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You've reminded me of one other possibly related bit of information. It has a 3" body lift and I believe there's a steering shaft extender involved if I remember right. It was installed by a previous owner at some point in the past. No idea about the brand, but they took a lot of shortcuts. I assume it was shade tree work.

I won't be able to check electrical for a few weeks. I'm just hoping someone has run into these two features not working at the same time. Easy fix sort of stuff based on experience. Maybe a plug that isn't connected.

My first guess would be clockspring. One other possibility (only for the horn though) is that the pad in the airbag went **** up (this recently happened on my Charger).

HemiLonestar said:

My first guess would be clockspring. One other possibility (only for the horn though) is that the pad in the airbag went **** up (this recently happened on my Charger).

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I've just done some reading on the clockspring. I'm going to order a replacement and see if that does it. Both horn switches aren't working, though it chirps when I lock it remotely. The left and right steering wheel controls make it four things that all pass through the clockspring electrical ribbon, and those ribbons wear out over time in my experience.

Thanks gang!