Horn does not work...

Canada Nissan Automotive
1

The vehicle is an S13.

I checked the fuse itself under the hood and it seems to fine.

I pulled off the steering wheel and I come to find that there is an issue with a spring-equipped pin that is supposed to make contact with the back of the steering hub. The pin itself was a little grimy so it didn’t move out all the way to make contact with the ring around the back of the steering hub. I fixed with some WD-40. Now the pin from the steering column touches the back of the hub.

I checked with a ohmmeter for the new connection. It seemed to now from the red horn wire off the hub to the back of the steering column. The ground also seemed to be fine as well. From what I can tell the horn wire is green with a white stripe.

I shorted out the live wire with the ground to see if I would get horn and no cigar.

Any ideas? Sorry, on second thought this is the wrong forum. Maybe move this to the installations section.

2

horn relay

3

Upon further inspection today under better light it seems that the horn fuse was blown.

I replaced the horn fuse with a 10A like required and the horn works. However the horn works for about 1/2 a second before blowing.

I replaced the fuse with a 20A (twice the rating) and it seems to be working without blowing.

The horns (high and low) are not very loud and on top of that the lights initially dim a bit when you hit it. I also get a slight momentary dim when I hit the brakes as well.

Any ideas on the horn not being loud and the fuse blowing?

4

horns are no good!!

Never use a higher amperage fuse than recomended. Get new horns from wall mart and toss your 10A back in.

5

How much current can the stock horn relay support? Should I go with some generic ones like you suggested (from Princess Auto for instance) or should get something like this: http://www.amazon.com/FIAMM-74100-El-Grande-Horns/dp/B000DLBIGG.

6

that page wont work but normally when you get a air horn it will come with its own relay and you just use the trigger from that green horn wire if you wanted. But the regular p-auto special will work okay and be much louder than 15 year old worn out nissan ones.

7

Umm if the circuit was designed for 10 amps then that is what everything should be.

The wiring in our cars sucks anyways, its a really bad idea to push more current than recomended thru it

8

You guys think it’s definately the horns themselves or is there a short somewhere in the wriing?

Allen, the horn that I was posting was one of the FIAMM compact air horns. ~$30 at CrappyTire for two of them. The come with its own relay so there really wouldn’t be any wiring issues.

However, I am a bit wary using the horn button and the existing wiring. It would be easy to pop on a separate button but for safety and convenience it would be more wise to use the steering wheel horn button.