Information on fixing horns

americium

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Horns are the least of the issues many of us deal with on these cars but hopefully this will help someone if they decide to dig into their horns.

With completely non functioning horns I spent some time figuring out that everything worked correctly up to the horns. I measured the resistance across the terminals of the horn and it was open. Opening the housing I see this:

25EF3642-EE22-4AF8-9EEF-2223FD11D74E.jpeg


The bar with that spring is the adjustable switch. The screw head that adjusts the switch is covered with black epoxy on the outside of the housing. It’s for adjusting the pitch. I removed the screw on the right which goes to the positive terminal and dug out the epoxy to remove the adjuster. It’s worth taking a measurement of how high the screw sticks up above the bar so you can get it close to the same pitch when reassembling.

Here is the switch showing the condition of the contacts. This is why there was no continuity.

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827DA4C9-5105-440C-A300-FE0CC933A253.jpeg


The switch opens up like a jackknife. After cleaning up the contacts with a dremel rotary brush I pushed the contacts back in line and reinstalled it. Prior to that I brushed out as much rust off the coil core as possible. Tested the continuity between the terminals and now it has good continuity. Reassembled the housing and it works great. That was the left side. The right side had an additional problem:

A45C33EB-5E5F-4770-933E-3E49689DA90D.jpeg


These contacts are welded on and can’t be soldered. With no way to reattach it in my garage I just cleaned up all the surfaces and put it back in. The hole in the insulator holds it in place and the arm doesn’t travel enough to allow it to come out. Its now a contact on both sides. It passed the continuity test and also makes noise like it should. However I will be surprised if it lasts very long.
 

duct-tape

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I've never even considered refurbishing horns. I would have just thrown them away and found others. lol
 

bluecoupe30!

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This reminds me of a conversation I had with my wife one day. She asked why I keep all the old parts (and she doesn't know half of them, ;)) I was able to convince her that many of them can just be disassembled, cleaned, polished, lubricated, painted and put back into service, and they will function far better than most reproductions, and actually fit. In the meantime, I need a new shelf!
 

Markos

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I took mine apart and could figure out how to fix them. I tossed them. Still have a set in my car so this may come in handy later.
 
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