Clock Spring Shade Tree Repair

I finally got off my ass and did the clock spring change out today as my horn was not working and all the tests indicated that the clock spring was the problem. It went surprisingly fast and easy. I followed the directions on UTUBE university and had no issues. The whole process took only about 90 min. The horn now works!

The only issue I had was with the cost of the part which was just over $ 300 from the local Toyota dealer. I could have gone with a cheaper non-OEM off EBAY, but I had a premature failure on a blower motor relay using the cheap Chinese part and did not want to do this repair again anytime soon.

My truck is an '11 in that I bought new in Sept '10 and this is the first repair beyond normal maintenance so I guess I can't complain.

 

What no picks to show off. Lol

 

When mine was on it's last leg the cruise control wouldn't come on unless wheel was turned about 70-90 degrees which made it a bit unsafe to set at speed, lol. The horn still worked and airbag light wasn't on but all was well after swapping it. Easy job and passed on the dealershit doing the recall replacement thing on it. Wasn't worth my time or risk of them working on my truck to go that route.

 

The dealership did my clockspring recall and after that, the truck stalled 4 time before I got 1/4 mile away. Had to turn around a limp it back and say ""WTF!"

 

Those clock-springs control a lot - steering wheel controls, horn, cruise control, and air bag. Good peace of mind to get oem, but, man, Chinese knockoffs are so tempting for their cheap pricing.

 

Mine is on its way out I think. Cruise, volume controls intermittent.

Might be a good time to get the phone control buttons as well.

 

I have 2013 wheel with audio controls but need to make the 3 wire harness to go from st column to stereo. SR5 regular cabs not wired for it. My clockspring has all the pins for it, just need to go junkyard diving and do a little snip snip for both ends I need. I did this already when adding st wheel controls to my 04 xB that didn't come with them. Did some fun spiral work getting that action all happy. The wiring harness was easy part. So yes, soon I will have factory st whl audio controls in my SR5 RC.

 

Did u finish getting your audio controls wired. Could you post any pictures of what you did?

 

Did the Chinese OEM for a bad horn, exact copy, Been fine last 10k 34$ verses 300

 

I'd be interested in what all it takes to get it working..... I have a 05 SR5 a cess cab

 

I have not completed this for my truck yet but here is a link to the thread with pics I made for doing the same thing in my xB.........

https://www.clubxb.com/threads/2004-2006-xb-oem-steering-wheel-controls-success.88187/#post-1515521

Must have right st whl with controls, the right clock spring with pins for horn, cc and controls and stereo with 20 pin connector. then it is harvesting 20 pin connector with wiring and the 12 pin column harness ends from a donor toyota from junkyard and connecting the 3 audio control/horn/2 cc wires either by splicing or pin swapping in connector or combo of both. wiring diagrams will tell which color wires and what position in connector things need to be. airbag has it's own orange and black connection to spiral so don't be scared, this doesn't mess with those. There are stretch of years that toyota column harness and stereo harnesses are common so they won't have to come from a tacoma. as long as you follow pin locations on both ends just connect them up and test them out then make harness, wire loom it and route from stereo to column, plug it all back in and enjoy. my reg cab has no nanny features so the vsc or traction control issue of the xB spiral swap so this time will be even easier........after a trip to the junkyard. sorry, been real busy but will post up taco specific pics here when I actually get around to it.

 

Had no idea failing clock springs was a thing.

 

Yeah, there was recall for them on 2nd gens....can't remember actual year span but I'm sure there is a thread on here that has that info. was back a few or several years ago.

 

I actually have all of my hardware installed. I ended up going with a new airbag, and OEM supposed clock spring off e-bay. I got both steering wheel switches, one from e-bay , one from dealer. I got numerous switches from junkyard but none of those would fit my clock spring. i was able to procure the ribbon cable from a junkyard. I also clipped both ends of the SWC cable at junkyard. Using those connectors and Toyota's wiring diagram to confirm made the 3 wire harness. Hooked everything up, new Radio, PAC, XM tuner, backup camera and microphone. This is almost a success story. Oh yeah horn connected thru separate wire coming from clock spring. The airbag passed all test (no light came on). The radio works, sirius-XM works, backup camera works, horn works. Now the bad news. The steering wheel connectors do absolutely nothing. Next step is to pull the radio again and try to re-calibrate the PAC. According to the directions, i will be able to tell if the PAC is getting any signal from the SWC. I really don't know what to try next, i am sure the harness is wired correctly. One thing i don't understand, is where is the power coming from to run the switches. I definitely didn't add any power to them. The truck originally only had the horn wire leaving the clock spring. That was it. If anyone has any ideas or can point out what I've done wrong, I would appreciate it

 

New radio is where my question would be.....I used all oem stuff connected to oem stereo........same thing I will be doing with truck. Not sure what adapter or whatever might be needed for aftermarket to oem functionality.