Koko4

Just as the title says - girlfriend's horn stopped working suddenly the other day. It is a '98 Accord with 260k miles, so maybe it was just it's time to go. I looked in the fuse box under the hood and swapped the horn relay with the one next to it - horn still didn't work. I'm not sure what to check next / if there's a way of testing the horn itself. Thanks for any tips..this is a first!

lazlong

Did you hear the relay click when the horn was pressed?

Koko4

Nope - just tried it again with no click whatsoever.

lazlong

Sounds like you're not getting power to the relay. Probe the relay socket for voltage: Take a multi-meter (voltmeter), turn it to volts, put the negative probe (black) on the battery negative terminal, then with the red probe probe each of the slots in the relay socket until you get voltage. They usually have 2 small and 2 large slots, 1 of the larger ones should be constant power.

*I'm not being condescending about the step-by-step, I just don't know how much experience you have.

Koko4

Finally got back to looking at it tonight - I probed the relay sockets with no power experienced.

It should be mentioned that the previous owner did a hack-job of wiring and installed an aftermarket security system, which up until now was stuffed out of the way and not a problem. I used a wire to test the actual horn, and it worked fine. The relay does not click when you try and press the horn from inside the car, and I swapped it with the neighboring relay (same one) with no change.

Leads me to believe that it is a problem with the horn "switch" itself (pushing down on the steering wheel), or a problem with wiring somewhere. It will be hard to trace the wiring back.

Also worth mentioning that the cruise control stopped working recently. The light on the dash will come on, but the actual "Set / Resume / Cancel" buttons do nothing. I've crawled up under there and looked at the brake light switch (which also tells the cruise control to engage / disengage, correct?) and it seems to be pressed in all the way when the brake pedal is released. Tried the whole "lifting up on the brake pedal with your toe" while trying to engage the cruise control. No luck.

Coincidence that they both stopped working around the same time? I also checked the fuse on the driver's side panel, for the horn, and it is fine. Sorry to revive the old thread!

tim73

If you got a good wiring diagram, you can check the horn switch & wiring from the fuse to the relay. Pull the relay, and set it aside youre interested in the socket the relay plugs into. You need to know which two pins are for the solenoid, and which two complete the circuit to the horn. Your interested in the solenoid side. One side of that circuit should be a ground. The other, should go to the horn switch on the wheel. If you have ground on one side, when you push the horn button you should have 12v on the other. if you dont have 12v or ground, then you know which side of the circuit the problem is.

Lost Again

Clock spring

Koko4

YOU WERE RIGHT! My dad and I were looking through the wiring diagram and tested a bunch of things before realizing that the clock spring was the missing link. Had to take apart the steering wheel and get a used clock spring from Pull-a-Part, but all is well now. Horn AND cruise work!! Couldn't be happier!

Lost Again

Glad you got it going. Sometimes we forget about the "little things".

Thanks for the follow up to the end of the story.

Koko4

I never knew it actually provided an electrical connection to those components..that's what had me so confused. I always thought of a clock spring as something you REALLY don't want to break, hence the reason that you keep the steering wheel carefully centered at all times when working in that area.

Might be a stupid question, but what would cause the airbag to randomly go off? I always thought it would be if the clock spring snapped, but that might just be my naive / paranoid self talking and making up scenarios.