Technical Horn don't work

I have a 1958 -1960 Impala steering wheel on my car. Some time ago, I removed the wheel but when I put it back on, I managed to break the plastic donut piece above the diaphragm contact piece. Bought a replacement donut but can't get the horn to work. With the horn ring and such removed, I ground out the spring loaded contact on the cancelling cam and the horn honks but when I put everything back - no horn. Anyone out there who might have a clue, please help.

 

"No horn, watch for finger!"

 

Well George, I pretty well agree with those sentiments. When some idiot cuts out in front of me I can't think fast enough to use the horn anyhow but I figure that if I've gone to all this trouble to wire one in, the darn thing should at least work.

 

Is this what you have?

 

My first reaction would be to get on the brakes.

I have never used the horn in any car I have ever owned, I find 90% of the time the person doing the horn blowing is the one in the wrong.

Last week I saw someone run a red light about T-bone another car then started blowing the horn as if they were the one done wrong!

 

I think the horn ring isn’t pushing the top contact far enough to touch the bottom contact.

 

Thank you alanp561 for the picture. That is the parts I'm dealing with. Everything was working until I "fixed" it. Took off the steering wheel to fill in the cracks, paint it and make it pretty. Upon reassembly, got the parts misaligned and managed to crack the donut when I tightened the screws. Sourced repro parts for the fix and it hasn't worked since. It's not that I haven't experience with this stuff since GM has used these parts clear into the 70's and I've never had any issues with them. I have scraped paint off all the surfaces that could make for a poor ground and tried checking as best as I could with a multimeter but dealing with parts that aren't screwed together and holding test leads with both hands is difficult. Probably a case of putting the pieces together wrong but I only see one way to do it and as I previously mentioned, this isn't my first rodeo. Hoping some one will chime in with a "You clutz, do it like this" and make me feel like an idiot.

 

Thank you Moriarty. Unfortunately, that is exactly what I did and it don't work. Probably inferior replacement parts.

 

Try cleaning along the outer part of the wheel hub. Sometimes xtra paint will cause you to loose ground. Keep jacking with it it’ll work.

 

Show us all your parts. As well, you do have the spring loaded pin in place?

 

Well it's now about a month later. Since I needed to go to the pick a part for something for my daily driver, I managed to come across a 1976 or thereabouts GMC motorhome chassis that uses similar horn button pieces so I swapped them out and the horn still don't work with the Impala horn ring. Eliminated the Impala horn ring and substituted the the metal piece that the plastic GMC horn button snaps onto and everything works so I figure that the white plastic donut piece must be a bit off the OEM specs. Would like to source an original part but don't think my chances are good at finding one. Should have been more careful and not broke it.

 

The orange piece that Moriarty shows. And the red piece from alanp561. Iirc. Used to come in different lengths for different steering wheels/columns. Though I suspect the after market only supply's one generic size/length. As far as the aftermarket from China is concerned. It doesn't actually have to work. As long as it looks similar.

 

I've tried every combination and permutation that I could come up with with my various pieces and haven't succeeded. Of course, it worked great with the original ones I started with. Going to look up a friend who purchased an entire repro steering wheel assembly and compare parts.

 

The white thing.