Horn Troubles

Hello,

I just bought a 1997 Air Nautique., Great shape, but has. a few things needing some attention.

One is the horn, it won't honk.. When you push the button you can hear it try but its just a hollow buzz sound.

Here is what I did to try to diagnose. Using a voltmeter, I have 12V to the hot side of the horn button. When I press the button, I have around 9 volts coming out. I pulled the horns out (what a pain) and they work when jumpered straight from the battery. I reinstalled the horns, and jumpered 12v from the battery to the wire going to the horn from back of the button (it was unplugged from the button) to rule out the wiring loom. Horns worked with that jumper. I then jumpered from the hot wire at the horn button to the wire going to the horns, bypassing the button all together. The horns worked.

This made me believe it must be the switch. Ordered new switch from Nautique Parts.com and when I installed it, I have the same problem. I checked voltage at the new button and same output, around 9 volts.

So what else could it be? Could the horns actually be bad, needing a full hot load of 12 volts to work, when they should only require the 9 volts I'm getting out of the switch?

Thanks for the help!!

Trey,
I wouldn't condemn the horn just yet. It works when you hooked it up directly to the battery. I think you're loosing the volts someplace due to high resistance. The resistance could be coming from bad connections or even bad contacts in a relay. Set your VOM to Ohms and do some more testing.

Trey,
If you are seeing good voltage on one side (in) of ether a switch contact or say a relay contact, but poor volts on the other side (out) then there is resistance dropping the volts. You remove at least one wire from the switch or relay so you are only measuring resistance across it's contact and not resistance from wire or another device. Across the contact, you should read near zero Ohms.

Is the horn button the only switch for the horn? Sometimes there's a relay to handle the higher amps of the horn because the switch can't handle the amps.

Give it a try and I know you will find the VOM to be a very useful tool.