I have a 92 Civic LX with 184,000 miles. Today I replaced the steering wheel for my Civic(Steering wheel from a junkyard) and everything was installed by the book(Haynes)..I went to for a test drive...Took 2 left turns...it was good..then took a right turn & heard a click from the steering wheel. Right after that happened I pulled over & opened up the Steering Wheel...everything looked pretty good to me..So I put it all back together & went driving again..Heard another click from the wheel on another right turn.

When I got home I googled "Steering-Wheel+clicking" and it seems most likely my Clock spring is broken(horn doesn't work either). I already know the problem but here's the question...How does a clock spring break? When I opened the wheel up I didn't see any pieces of anything..Nothing felt loose...So how is it that it's broken?

.....BTW..SRS light is on..but that's easy to take care of.

Also is it safe to driver with a "broken" Clock Spring? I'm all out of money & won't be able to buy one for at least 3 weeks.

 

Sound like the clock spring to me.

 

sounds like the clock spring to me.

don't drive it until it's fixed

 

Guys Guys..I know it's the clock spring...my main question is how does it break?

Also is it ok to drive for a few weeks till I get it?...I won't really need Cruise control to drive & I rarely use my horn.

 

It breaks because it's out of sync with the rack. Ordinarily the wheel turns 3 turns before the rack stops, the clock spring can turn the same amount. But for example if the clock spring is already at 1 turn (instead of zero) at the left stop, when you turn all the way to the right the spring will have turned 4 turns and will break.

With a broken clock spring, the driver's air bag (if equipped) will fail to deploy in a crash.

 

Ahh..Thank you MK! I was looking in the Haynes today & saw where it said how to adjust the Clock Spring correctly if you somehow turned it left & right by mistake. As it turned out..when I had my steering wheel off I turned the Clock spring left & right with my hand thinking nothing of it(and without reading the manual instruction completely).
Guess that teaches me to read EVERYTHING next time!

Thanks again!