Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

Interesting, thanks for that. Looks fairly slim too which should help if I go this route. Have this niggling feeling currently I might be over the db limit for track days so want to avoid that.

Wheel is in, honking ability present in full.

It turns out that all inner steering column shafts receive a coating from Porsche during construction.

When the upper bearing is pressed onto the shaft its the luck of the draw as to whether enough of this anti-corrosion coating is removed during said process to allow electrical continuity between the inner shaft, bearing and outer part of the column.

In this picture you see my rack with the central shaft removed, and the contact point now lightly sanded to remove factory coating where it meets the inner race of the top bearing, that is located in the outer part of the column. Once re installed Precision found/achieved around 4ohms resistance between the inner and outer part of the column. ( via the top bearing) . The bearing in the lower part of the column is isolated via a large rubber buffer, so no continuity would ever be achieved through that point.

Luck of the draw on how much resistance a rack provides when being built from new. Very little continuity is needed to operate the horn.

Well you have 1600 reasons to honk that horn. Take it away Sam!

Every time I drive to my main client I go through a small town which name translates to "Honktown".

I always do.

To be fair to you, the honking button in the MG doesn't do anything.

Nor does the real horn lever push, either. It makes a barely audible parp, which sounds quite vulnerable and disappointed.

Luckily I always have the roof down so can shout "fucking pox ridden cunt burger" very loudly instead.

MOT requirement, the honking. Also a safety device- I wanted a good strong honk ready for instant deployment.

My Vespa gets away with producing the sort of noise you'd get if you stepped on a small duck.

@bq remember the w124 horn? That was a good horn

Errytime you mean to cancel the indicators.

Vaguely remember an Citroen at a car show that had town and country horns. A polite little bleep for the town and ocean-liner-esque blasts for the country. A pretty good setup really.

My 1988 W126 Merc had that too. It was a toggle switch.

I always thought a two-stage push switch would have been better. A gentle press for ‘excuse me, those lights have changed to green’ a hard shove for those more angry moments.

I used to blast that just to hear it. A sublime, imperious tone!

And as a bonus you could just vaguely press and get a lonesome pj-pj-pj-pjuuuu

i have a bullet box like that in the straight bit of my system and an actual oval box just before the exit, 57mm system, always under 105db

I'd love a w126... one day...

It was the 500 SEL and was a bit underwhelming TBH, not much better than the 280 W123 I sold to buy it.

I expected glorious luxury, but a contemporary Jag does it so much better.

Supplier please?

Good to hear, looking like this might be the route to go in that case.

911 is ready to collect, a mere £1,600 to pay for the privilege.

If you don’t like the new wheel will the old one fit the new column?

Not being a dick, ginuwine q.

Yep.

What percentage is that of the purchase price?

16?

16.8%

Over 20% if we include the price of the wheel.