07 Steering Column Clockspring Issue

Anyone with an 07 receive a letter from Chrysler indicating select 07 models are having the warranty extended to 10 years or 150,000 on the above problem.

Some of the affected vehicle population may experience an airbag lamp illumination caused by a steering column clockspring issue.

The very day before I received this letter, my airbag lamp stayed on and that was the first time ever. Stayed lit the entire day. Next day letter arrives, jeep has not done it since, weird.

Anyone know what this is exactly? Thanks for any input you may have.

I just got that letter last week. But i haven't had any issues with the clockspring. At least not yet.

I got mine too, What does the clock spring even do?

the clock spring is what allows the electronics (usually the horn) on the steering wheel to turn all the way around without wires getting in the way. In other words it's a fancy electrical connector.

^^Yeah, what he said.

Back in the old days there were contacts that were spring loaded for the horn. With the advent of airbags, this was not good enough. Sometimes the spring loaded contacts would not make contact 360 deg. causing 'hit or miss" as the wheel goes round. This is not a big deal with the horn. "hit or miss" does not play well with air bags however. Hence the clock spring. It is actually a wire or wires made into a flat strip that is coiled round and round like a spring in a clock (hence the name). With all of the cruise and stereo controls on the new steering wheels, this data also travels through this bundle-o-wires. Hope this explains it......

very clearly actually. Well in this case I am glad that they are covering for an extended period of time.

Another question though, if we dont have any electronics (other than the horn) on our steering wheel, would we ever notice that this mechinism went out? What I mean is, if it failed at a previous point in time, but we never used our horn or noticed any other obvious mechanical failure, how would we know that the mechinism failed?

Thanks for the explanation gentlemen and I believe the way you can tell if you have an issue is the airbag lamp on your dash will stay lit constantly until repaired. I guess it's just a matter of time on mine, since I previously mentioned, my airbag lamp was on ONE day BEFORE letter arrives, and now nothing.

"Sorry mam, we are unable to duplicate the problem", I can just hear it now

IIRC the clock spring also tells the computer where the steering wheel is (expecially when it's off center and the ESP goes out of wack).

Another note;

When the air bag warning light is illuminated they will not function!
same with the ABS light.