Ghost Horn

[Angkor]

This may be a new one in this forum. My horn blasts on its own, mostly when I make right turns. I'll be driving down the street and suddenly, Honk! Honk! Honk! People then turn to me wondering why I'm honking at them. Here's the truly wacky thing about this: I've disconnected the vacuum tube to the horns. This takes care of the manual horn button on the wheel, but not the mystery honking when I drive. Could this be a technical issue or is my M151 haunted by the ghost of some long gone GI? Any tips would be welcome.

[Rickf]

The horn is electrical and not vacuum. The wire goes in through the steering box and up the steering column on an A1 and through the lower steering column on an A2. If that wire gets a bare spot on it and grounds out it will blow the horn. The wire is hot all the way through the horn and up to the horn button, the button grounds the circuit which blows the horn.

[Kurt Lesser]

The way the horn works is that there is +24 volts applied directly to the horn and then the horn button provides the ground to sound the horn. So a short to ground anywhere in the system will cause it to sound. Pull the old wiring from the steering tube and use a .223 bore brush on a drill and clear the tube of rust. The new horn buttons come with a meter of wire to push down the column, rewire it and you should be good to go. It doesn't hurt to seal both ends of the steering tube with a bit of silicon sealer to keep water from rusting it up again.

Kurt