Metallic dust inside steering wheel cover...

What is this from?

my car makes a scraping noise when turning the wheel at low speeds, i thought it was just the plastic cover.
Then today as i was putting in a new wiper arm i saw this..
Its metallic dust.


inside the cover

I'm guessing it's from the horn contact. See the copper looking rod in your top pic? It's spring loaded and contacts on a metal ring on the back of your steering wheel. It will obviously wear as you turn the wheel, leaving behind the offending dust. Spring loaded so as it wears more rod is exposed to always contact the ring so your horn works year in year out. Probably needs to be replaced at some stage, but my horn still works and I've done 310000 km.

okay so its nothing to worry about too much?

Yep definitely the horn contact. My sons was making a bad scraping sound when we bought it and thanks to looking at these forums, I found a little bit of grease applied to the metal disc that the rod contacts, stopped the sound altogether. Clean the disc first. It should also lessen the metal shavings.

that sounds like a good idea

Old thread, but I've been having this same problem as well, and it seems worse now that I've installed my momo wheel. What did you use to apply the grease?

my finger. just wiped it on.