Hey, here's something that does more than anything else I've done to get these old fellas honking --- get some sandpaper and shine up the copper spring and the area where the spring seats inside the steering wheel cavity.
Bobby Oval
Uh, oh. You're right -- if the insulation on the center wire breaks down, the horn sounds all the time, annoying the neighbors!
BO
Bob Johns>
Ahhhh... what year is your car? I'm guessing an early one. This is the setup the earlier cars had (pre 1963-4?). The later ones didn't have this type of setup, instead the whole column acts an an earth, with a live wire coming up through the centre, and connects to the steering box/column join and to the outer horn ring. This is how it is in my 1966 1300 Beetle. The problem I have is that the column is earthed through the steering box, which isn't doing it's job and earthing badly!
I don't know why they changed this, but the earlier setup seems MUCH better than the later one!
Yes, I also replaced those when the fuel tank was out.
Thanks :-) I've printed out your whole reply for reference - very useful! Now I'll go and dig out my multimeter :-)
-- Howard
1966 VW Beetle 1300 Deluxe -Well mate, I've got wiring diagrams from 1954 thru 1974 and they all show the "live wire" connecting directly from the fuse to the horn and the earthing circuit being completed from the horn to up under the horn button somehow.
As far as the horn circuit word descriptions in my various books are concerned, they are all fairly vague as to how the system is put together.
Even a late printing of the famed "Idiot" book features an unhelpful horn circuit diagram on page 348. Over on page 352, things don't get much better, advising us to take the hot wire off the horn and touch it to the shiny looking for spark. In my experience, all this does is blow my horn fuse! It does say that the live wire does "run up to the horn button through the tube to the steering wheel and is grounded by pushing down the horn button", which of course is not what the circuit diagram over on page 352 shows!
The Idiot book confusion may come from the fact that, once the horn button is pushed, the earthing part of the circuit does indeed become "live".
A diagram in the Bentley book, which should be the last word for us volks folks, and for as late as 1971 models, shows the brown (earth) wire running from the horn up to the horn button, which supposedly grounds there by the familiar push process.
Now that I have demonstrated for all the world to see my complete ignorance of anything not Oval, I proudly sign myself ---
Oval Bobby (or was that Bobby Oval?)
Howard Rose wrote:
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