Smoke behind steering wheel

[airportmark]

Sunday was driving around. Truck started to smell hot. Stopped at a light and saw white smoke coming up from behind the wheel. Headed for home was getting late. Turned on the county road and went to brite the headlights. The lever would not move and the lights went out. Fiddled and jiggled the lever and lights came on. Got home OK, next day took the column apart and the switch had melted. The bad news is it melted the connector on the switch. I hope Ford has a replacement without changing the whole harness. Do not want to take the column apart. Suppose could try and find one in wrecking yard and try to just get the plug. Least the truck didn't burn

 

[DaveBen]

Don't splice the wires in the column. If you are getting the wires at a junk yard, get them long enough to run out of the column and splice them where you can easily get to them.

Dave

 

[airportmark]

Looks like the wires go just a short ways and go into the column harness. Would be simple matter to put raycams in it and just put on the plug.

 

[Dogman]

Sound like the multi switch is bad to. It controls blinker,high beams,wipers. My old truck would smoke when the switch was going bad.

 

[airportmark]

Ford has the replacement connectors for the multi function switch. The one for the dimmer is $45. The harness on the column actually is a lot of the dash do not think about that. The Ford switch was $175 the one at Napa was $90. Just have to get it done.

 

[airportmark]

Got the connector in. The wires from the connector to the harness is real short. They reccomend staggering the splices to keep the bundle size down. No room for that, just had to put it together in what room there was. Then was tough to try and get the wires so that would all fit together. All done turned the key and the wipers ran on high and the washers were on continous. Took it all back apart put in another switch and it works.