My Elise came with an OMP steering wheel, fitted by a previous owner. The original Lotus wheel came with the car too but I like this OMP one so have kept it.

The only thing I didn’t like was the noise it made when turning the wheel. It wasn’t noticeable in normal driving but when ever manoeuvring to park etc it made a horrible scratchy/squeaky noise. Not something I could put up with for long so I removed some bits to get a closer look.

As soon as I removed the plastic trims it was clear something was not right as there was a lot of swarf, from something being worn away, collected in the lower plastic trim.

And here was were it was coming from.

For the horn switch in the wheel centre there is a spring loaded metal pin contact between a ring on the steering wheel boss and the column mount. You can’t really see the pin in this picture as there is a the coil spring around it. The coil spring was the problem as it was rubbing on the ring contact on the wheel boss making the horrible scratchy/squeaky noise. I have no idea why the spring was there as it seems entirely unnecessary as the pin itself is already spring loaded from behind to ensure it maintains contact with the ring.

Anyhow I removed the offending article.

So now the spring loaded pin contact can be left to do it’s job as originally intended.

I cleaned all the swarf off everything then put it all back together.

I got it back together as neatly as I could given the original Lotus hand built fit and finish.

All done and no more squeaky steering! 🙂