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Heated Steering Wheel


Cardinal Grammeter

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Anyone do this?

 

There are a bunch of overs out there which dangle a wire to your cigarette lighter - this is a joke and not an option.

 

Been years since I had my column apart, is there a slip ring?  OR is there a bore hole through the steering shaft? (Studebaker ran their horn wire down the shaft and out the bottom of the steering box - would be perfect way to add heater wires.)

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12v comes from the horn relay and by harness to the contact under the wheel. The contact is spring loaded and rubs against a brass ring on the underside of the steering wheel. From there it goes to the horn button that is grounded to the steering column. Pressing the horn button completes the contact to ground energizing the horn relay closing a contact sending 12 v to the horns.

 

Buy some gloves?

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On a 521 the coil in the horn relay is always hot.  The relay ground wire goes to the turn signal switch, but is not connected to any turn signal wiring.  There is a stationary ring, that a spring loaded contact connected to the steering wheel touches.  Pushing the horn bar connects the spring loaded contact to ground.  I think the grounding is in the steering wheel shaft itself, but I am not sure of that.

 

My opinion, using the horn switch spring loaded contact for a steering wheel heater ground would be way too much current for the horn switch spring contact to handle on a continuous basis.   The sliding contact would rapidly burn away, similar to using a too low resistance ignition coil with points,

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A single seat heater is about 4 amps, so a steering wheel is probably 1 amp which I think the contact would handle.

 

I'm looking into this because I'm teetering on dropping $350 to get my seat reupholstered and am thinking why not put the heater in it?  ...and then might as well do the steering wheel.

 

There are lots of ribbon flex joint configurations used in printers and robotics.  Would be interesting to work it out properly if I had the time.  Right now I have a rear break that usually makes a scraping noise when not breaking and then if I pull the emergency break, there is a clunk that occurs before the breaking begins.  Breaks for years were working/wearing flawlessly.  Rrrrrr.... and a leaking gas tank, .....and a 5-speed taking up limited garage space waiting for me to...

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On 11/4/2019 at 9:30 PM, datzenmike said:

About a million dollars was spent making a ball point pen that worked in zero g for the astronauts. The Russians just used a pencil. This is over thinking the problem of hands on a cold steering wheel. Wear gloves.

 

 

funny fact, the reason we didn't use pencils in space is because  we did not want the pencil tip to break off and potentially get caught in the electronics or become a dust in zero g. Back to the point however I agree just use gloves, but if you REALLY REALLY want heated hands for some reason in a car just use hand warmers?  

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