64 Chevy C-10 Horn Relay not working

[elane352]

Greetings,

Although I have looked at some horn relay postings, I apologize if I missed one that covered/addressed my particular problem. So forgive me if this has already been covered.

Background
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I replaced all of my wiring harnesses with an American Auto Wire kite.

The kit has a three blade horn relay.

Since the kit requires a 1-wire alternator (internal voltage regulator), I opted to use the kit's horn relay and discontinue using the OEM relay I had, which was not a 3 blade relay.

If you regard the blade placement as a triangle, the blade at the top takes a red 12-volt wire that goes to the fuse box.

The lower right blade takes a green wire that goes to the horn.

The lower left blade takes a black wire that goes to the black wire on the horn connector cluster.

I have triple checked the wiring and it is reflected as above. However, I have done something wrong since the horn does not work; and it did work before I swapped out the old wiring.

As an additional test, I also hooked up another relay I purchased from Auto Zone this morning. I still had the same no horn sounding problem. This has to be something I have done wrong in terms of wiring.

Any thoughts? Let me know what I am missing please.

Eddie

[ray_mcavoy]

Hi Eddie,

From your description, it sounds like that AAW kit is using the newer style GM horn relay and it sounds like everything is correct in terms of the connections.

With the relay unplugged, try connecting a jumper wire between the red and green wires on the connector. That should make the horn sound. If not, check to make sure the horn has a good ground. It grounds through it's mounting bracket so if this is a new build with freshly painted or powder coated parts, that might be preventing a good connection. The other issue could be a defective horn ... sometimes tweaking the adjustment screw back & forth just a little will get them working again.

Now, if the horn works with the jumper wire but still doesn't work when you plug the relay back in, that would most likely be due to a problem with the horn button in the steering wheel. When pushed, the horn button should complete the black wire circuit to ground to activate the relay. Sometimes the center hub of the steering wheel and/or the spring washer get a little bit of surface rust on them and no longer make a good electrical connection when you push the horn button.

[elane352]

Thank you very much Ray. I will check that out.

Eddie

[elane352]

Okay the horn did work with the jumper wire. I will next remove the steering wheel to check out the horn button as you mentioned.

Eddie