Hi Paul,
After reading your reply above, I thought about all I had spent restoring my car so far and decided a couple of hundred dollars extra, although painful to spend, would probably be forgotten when I looked at the final product and thought about it lasting the rest of my life.
I ordered it 4/17 from Tom Hanson at Classic Center in Irvine, who shipped it the same day. I received it the next day 4/18 here in Canada and, with the excellent suggestion that you made, installed it yesterday. Preparation of the old and new parts (fingers from a nitrile glove and a couple of feet of vinyl tape as you suggested above), removal, installation and a few minutes of admiring my work took me about two hours. My steering wheel was installed on the column but I had not yet installed the horn pad so I didn't have to remove that. It's beautiful, original, and the cancellation works like a charm. I'll have to wait to know if it works, but I have few doubts.
Thanks for your rubber glove finger and tape tip. Only one extra comment. Before installing the rubber glove finger and taping the wire ends, I straightened the pins at the end of the wires to be parallel to the wires. It made the "glove finger bundle much smaller and capable of passing through the column without stress, neither the wires nor me. After taking off the rubber glove finger, I just re-bent the wires at the pins and lined them up before reinserting them in the connector. The Mercedes-Benz system came with a new 2-piece brown bakelite 12-pin connector, so now I have lots of spare parts, except for the plastic handle on the end of the shaft.
Tom Kizer
