Adding secondary buttons to your steering wheel

[pacwest]

Ok, so you've bought that sweet sparco or momo steering wheel. Heck you might even have some fancy other kind but are using the standard 6 hole adapter. Most of these wheels come with a horn button. Some come with two horn buttons like mine for easy thumb action for the great unwashed who cut you off. Want to add a second button or "channel" to operate something else? Megasquirt launch control (2 step with spark cut), NOS, rocket launcher, smoke screen? Well it can be done. First locate one of these: Purchase a decent amount of black 22ga. wire. Remove your steering wheel. Remove upper and lower ignition surround. Notice the two wires for the horn? They do not ground, they just complete a circuit when the horn is pressed. The stock steering wheel has two slider circuits as you can see. So separate the wires. Ground one on your momo boss and find the one that makes the horn honk. That one will stay connected to the horn button obviously. The other one will be soldered to the new switches posted above. So, drill a nice little hole on the boss. On the inside on one of the four collapsible spokes. About halfway. This will be our ground for the horn switch and the XXX switch. Locate a decent self tapping screw and get out your dieletric grease for good measure. Obviously I'm describing ground on the steering column which grounds nicely. Ford could have done this but went with 2 sliders instead of one. Thank you un-named engineer. Solder two 22ga. wires per switch of equal length to the new switches. Put some heat shrink on them and make 'em look proper. Combine the wires and solder them together so that either switch will activate your XXX circuit. Combine the other two wires from the new switches, soldering them together and connecting a nice ground bung. Screw the ground from the new switches and the horn button to the hole you drilled. You will now have two separate channels for switch activation on your wheel. The tricky part comes next. Putting it together. And you'll see why 22ga. was needed. Lossley screw the top and bottom plates of the new switch on. Carefully make sure the horn wires go in the cut channels on the back of the wheel. The XXX circuit wires will go between the two new plates since they left a little room between them. Their thickness matches 22ga. wire. Make sure it all goes together nicely with no pinching. Tricky. Here you'll see why a good length of shrink tube comes in handy to keep the wires togther and shapeable for the curve. Make sure the curve is aenough to not pop the switches out. Tighten up the allen head bolts of the wheel. You're almost done. Look at the top of the steering column and you'll see two wires coming from the sliders. About 6 inches along the wires under the binnacle there is a foamy connector. Back probe this to double check you got the wiring right. You checked about 4 times already right? Snip the wire that is the new buttons and connect to your XXX circuit. Leave the horn wire. Mine is going to activate Megasquirt's 2-step for launch control. Building boost at a standstill while revving to 4000 rpm and cutting spark. I slip the clutch and release button. Why not a clutch switch like everyone else? I like to match revs on downshift and this would get in the way. Plus I can press it any time I want.

If you were logged in, you wouldn't be seeing this ad! Register your free account today, or log in if you already have an account.