I hate my Golf... what kind of car does this?

I finally finished the suspension, front sway bar and brakes on my 1995 Golf, so this past weekend I started putting the interior back together- I had to do a water pump so it was taken completely apart. I also had to figure out why the horn wasn't working so I could get it inspected.

I've got the interior sort-of together- all of the wiring except for the radio/speakers is hooked back up. I ran the horn problem down to a bad brass ring or wiring problem in the steering wheel, so I grabbed a spare (sans airbag) out of the junkyard and put that in.

I turned on the car, tooted the horn and... the speedo needle jumped to 75. Pushing the horn for longer resulted in a standing still, engine not running speed of 115 MPH.

I hate electrical problems, I might just farm this one out to the small VW/Audi shop around the corner.

I never did get the rear sway bar installed, either. NNNNNGH

I had a friend with a '68 or so Karmann Ghia that would stay running until you turned the radio off, even if you had turned the ignition off and removed the keys.

My dad's old Toyota pickup horn didn't work if you pushed the button, but would honk without the button if the steering wheel was turned to just the right spot. Nothing mysterious but pretty funny. We always knew when dad was almost home, we could hear him make the corner 2 miles away.

Make sure these vehicles never get together with that Range Rover owned by somebody on here that unilaterally decided to turn on its stereo and party on while sitting unattended in the yard.

BTW, following this thread with interest to find out how the hell the horn affects the speedometer.

I love how common these electrical issues are for totally unrelated systems yet the same people thing a DBW throttle will always work!

Is it perhaps measuring decibels of the horn? Those amazing Germans!

My dad had a Plymouth who's horn went off in the middle of the night once at about 3:00 am. We all went running out there and since there was no rational reason for it and thus no apparent cure and of course the neighbors didn't seem to appreciate the noise, he just yanked the wires going to the horn underneath the car. Solved that problem..........permanently as the horn never did work again even after the wires were re-attached.

Add a ground to the cluster, I guess bad grounding makes electrical instruments go nuts.

A VW with an electrical problem? Who would have guessed?

In reply to benzbaronDaryn:

That's probably it right there. I seem to remember tearing a ground off of the dashboard on the passenger side and I might not have replaced it. Rather than going through the aggravation of removing the dash again, I'll just wire up a new ground.

I also ran outside and looked- there is an engine bay ground that isn't attached to anything, either.

Brett