Odd steering shaft question

[Goss4mer 0]

Ok, not sure if I’m stumped or chasing nothing. I was changing the manual steering box in my 1969 6 cylinder Mustang. When I went to tighten the rag joint bolts there was a spark. I played around and sparked each time I touched it with a screwdriver. I tested it with my multi meter and it showed 13.7 volts. Chasing it down I took off the steering wheel and put the meter to the column and no voltage. Cleaned up the wheel, horn and directional switch and put the wheel back on, tested and 13.0 volts again. No wheel, no voltage, wheel brings voltage. The pin for the horn has constant voltage. Would this give the column voltage and that’s just the way it is or am i missing something? It could have been like this forever and I didn’t even notice but changing the rag joint put it right in front of me.

[Midlife 840]

It sure sounds like you have a grounding issue...do you have a ground strap from the engine to the firewall?

The other possibility is that you have a pinched wire somewhere in the steering column.

[Mach1 Driver 634]

This problem is also posted on VMF, and the ground strap was mentioned there as were the three sources of power going to the column, which are fuse #1 for the flashers, fuse #7 for EM flashers, and lastly the horn, which is continuous (unswitched) and fed from the circuit breaker in the light switch.