Looking for steering wheel help.
 

Hello all, I'm a new owner of a 1981 240d. I've wanted to own of these cars for some time now, and a really nice four-speed manual car basically fell in my lap so I scooped it up. It also came with a 1983 automatic-equipped parts car that runs and drives. I'm no stranger to working on vehicles, but my experience is mostly with International Harvester light-line trucks, so I tend to be a bit brutish in my work. This is because all you ever have to do to fix an IH is hit it with successively larger hammers until it does what you want it to do. Then apply duct-tape.

Anyway, back to the 240d. I've already hammed up the throttle linkage once, which I fixed, and I goofed up replacing the little stupid black "key" thing for the idle speed control, which I also fixed. Then I snapped one of the bolts holding the waterpump in the waterpump housing when I replaced the old leaking waterpump. I also then fixed the snapped bolt (wasn't an easy job). I'm looking to have a bit more luck with this repair attempt. It should be pretty easy I hope. Here it is.

My horn pad seems like it's sprung. At first I thought it was normal, having little previous W123 experience, but then I noticed the parts car's horn pad is tight and integrated with the rest of the wheel. Mine sticks way out, and jitters and flops around as road imperfections are encountered. I was reading about and searching on these forums where I read that one can remove the pad by pulling on it, others say to remove the center Mercedes star first, but these are in instructions to remove the steering wheel itself. I'm just looking to tighten up whatever is causing the pad to stick out so far from the wheel. Any thoughts? I sold the parts-car three days ago, so no swapping wheels now.

Pull the fuse for the horn, then try to push down on all corners until it seats, replace fuse. Mine was sort of popped off in one corner when I bought my car.

You can "unhook" the pad if it's already disconnected in one or more corners. There's a warning in the FSM about damaging the pad, but if it's loose already what is there to lose?

There are a bunch of small screws and springs that are used to push the horn back out. If one is missing, the pad may rattle as you drive. Also the pad would be physically lose.

If you plan on removing the steering wheel you MUST use a large impact. Using a breaker bar, you will destroy the steering wheel if you try to hold it while loosening the 10 mm Allen bolt.