Club 80-90 Forums

The horn on my 1980 1600 aircolled is not working - just emits a week "peep" when the button is pressed. I have taken the horn unit off and linked it directly to the battery and it makes a very loud noise. I have taken the button out of the steering wheel and looked at all the contacts (given them a clean) and all looks ok, but still the horn does not work. The wiring from the horn unit appears to run back to the wiring for the headlights across the front of the van and back towards the fuse box, but was hoping to avoid stripping this all out.

Does anybody have any clues?

Sounds like a poor earth. I'd start with any connections and give them a good clean and make sure any spade connectors are tight.

I went through a Mare of a time with the Horn, anyway to cut a long story short, i would suggest you examine the ground connection on the steering wheel itself, there are two wires to the Horn button push ..one from the button push to the comuter and the other (Gnd) is to the steering wheel itself, unfortunaely this is a brass type double barbed spade I_I simply pushed into a recess in the aluminium steering wheel, this lends itself to electrolyic corrosion (dissimilar metals/moiusture) and leads to a poor earth (Horn is live 12V with ignition on and is grounded by the Horn push)
I prised it out and carefully cleaned both discoloured surfaces with a scotchbrite? for the double brass and a screwdriver blade for the recess and then refitted + added a wedge between the I_I to ensure proper contact.

Had similar problem last week for Vinnie's MOT.
In the end I connected a relay to the existing horn wiring, then ran a new feed from the fusebox to the relay and on to the horn. Super loud now

Rob

Thanks for the comments - will have another look and cleaning session over the weekend to see if I can get it working

The relay idea is a good one and essential if you want to fit a horn beyond the stock beetle 'beep' sound. I had to do that when I fitted an ooogah type horn.