84 Rabbit -- Missing Horn

I've got an 84 Rabbit that I purchased last December. It is completely missing its horn. Unfortunately, Bentley doesn't really show me much regarding the exact mounting of the horn. When I purchased the rabbit, the guy gave me a new horn, but said I would need to purchase the proper mounting hardware for it. Here are my questions:

  1. The following link shows a picture from the ETKA software of the various horn parts:
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    horn the previous owner supplied me is item #1 inthis picture. It is brand new, and I've verified that itworks by hooking it up directly to the battery. So, I'mgoing to assume that the other parts I need are #2, #3,#4, and #5. Can somebody please verify that this is allI need for mounting the horn?
  2. Where, precisely, does it mount? I've crawled under the car and looked around. I think it is somewhere beneath the battery, correct? Again, I can't really tell from the Bentley manual.

  1. Finally, I've found the positive yellow/black wire that is supposed to mount to the horn. But I seem to be missing the negative wire. Can I do without the negative wire?

Thanks! Bryan

Reply to
Bryan K. Walton
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That ETKA doesn't look anything like my '82, which is an A1 like your '84 should be (VW changed to A2 in '85)

I have just one horn and the metal arm on the horn bolts directly to the front clip (radiator support) of the body underneath the radiator, near the battery but not under the battery (a little more towards the passenger side). There is a 10mm stud that sticks out from the body, if your stud is missing you may need to drill and tap for a bolt.

The connection to the body is the ground, if your horn won't work once bolted in place you can run a short wire from the neg terminal on the horn to the bolt you bolted the horn to the body with.

Reply to
tylernt

You need the negative wire to ground the horn or it will not work. And not only that, but it's the negative wire that is "switched" at the steering wheel.

Reply to
Matt B.

Thanks Tyler. That simplifies it quite a bit!

-Bryan

Reply to
Bryan K. Walton

Hi Matt, Does this mean that I can't just run a ground wire from the horn to a piece of metal on the car body, but that I have to use the negative wire that originates in the steering wheel? I'm sorry if that sounds like a stupid question.

-Bryan

Reply to
Bryan K. Walton

I have an 84. The body is the ground. None of those horn pictures look familiar to me in that I only got 1 lead to the horn. Works fine. Mine is mounted under the rad, a 10 mm bolt is screwed into a nut which is welded in to steel backing for the lower body panel under the bumper. Cram yer head under the car and look up between the motor and the front of the car. One of those holes will take a 10mm bolt.

Reply to
wrenchwench

There is a horn relay and the horn button does indeed ground out in order to trip the relay, but the horn itself gets + from the relay and is grounded through the body. At least according to my Bentley... granted my Bentley is for diesels but I have to think that VW would have made the gas cars the same way as far as the horn is concerned?

Not a stupid question. If your car has a horn relay, you can ground your horn at the body. The steering wheel switch is a "separate system" thanks to the relay so it can be disregarded for our purposes here.

If for some reason VW built the gas cars without a relay, then Matt B is probably right about grounding through the steering wheel switch... I'm not 100% sure as I don't have a book for the gas cars, sorry. :(

Reply to
tylernt

My 1988 (gasoline engine) Cabbie has a horn relay. AFAIK, all Cabbies have the relay, and probably all Rabbits - diesel or gasoline powered.

Reply to
Papa

my '91 GTI is gas and it's negative switched at the steering wheel. VW probably wired them all the same.

Reply to
Matt B.

If you're using the original 12V wire, yes.

Because the original 12V wire will have power to it either all the time (or at the very least when the ignition is on) and then if you ground to something other than a switched ground, your horn will be sounding all the time. That's fun for about 10 seconds, then it's annoying :)

Reply to
Matt B.

Thanks everybody for your replies. I'm going to simply get the appropriate bolt and nut, and hook that thing to the body. I'll hook it up and ground it to the body and see what happens.

Thanks! Bryan

Reply to
Bryan K. Walton

Hi everybody, I know I'm the king of late follow-ups (this being about two months since I initially asked the question). But, I got my missing horn problem fixed today. And I wanted to explain what was going on in case anybody in the future searches google for rabbit horn problems and happens to have my issue. A little background, when I bought this car last year, it didn't have a horn underneath the car. And the stud that the horn would bolt on to was missing.

  1. I ordered the horn and some of the weatherproof covers that go over the connectors on the horn.

  1. I bought a 10mm bolt and some appropriate nuts and washers from my local hardware store. Since I had an appropriate size hole below my radiator mount wall, I put the bolt through there.

  2. I still had the black/yellow wire dangling down to connect to the horn. So, using the appropriate wire connectors, I attached the wire to the positive on the horn, put the weatherproof cover over it, and bolted it on the new bolt I had purchased.

  1. I still had no working horn, however.

  2. Next, on the '84 rabbit, there are two fuses. There is a 4 amp fuse that supplies power to the horn switch which resides in steering wheel. I checked that, and it was good. There is also a 20 amp fuse for the horn relay. I checked that and it was also good. Then, I checked the horn relay (just to the right of the fuse panel). With a multimeter, I verified continuity. But when I pressed on the horn on the steering wheel, the relay didn't click.

  1. So, I pulled the relay and hooked it up to my car battery. When I did that, it clicked. So, I knew my relay was good. I put the relay back in the relay panel and proceeded to figure out why pressing the steering wheel horn didn't make the relay click.

  2. The '84 rabbit steering wheel has a vinyl, or "leatherette" cover on the front. You can pull it off from the bottom, very carefully. There are hooks at the top holding it on. After unhooking it and removing it, what lay before me was the horn switch. Essentially, there is a metal plate that goes across the horn that is spring loaded. Pushing on any part of it makes it touch another piece of metal. Hmm, pretty simple design . . . why isn't mine working? Removing this metal plate was a little more difficult. There are little (7mm - I think) bolts behind this plate. Carefully, unscrewing those bolts, the unit came off. I found my first problem, there is a little wire coming up through the steering wheel column that plugs into the back of this plate. For some odd reason, mine wasn't plugged in. Aha! So, I plugged mine in and then screwed the plate back on and put the vinyl steering wheel cover back over the plate. Now, pushing on the steering wheel made the relay click, but the horn still wasn't sounding. :-(

  1. Back to step 3. The horn wasn't grounded yet. I ran a piece of wire from the other terminal on the horn to some metal on the car.

  2. Working horn! Beep-beep! :-)

I hope this helps some people in the future, especially those tackling this issue for the first time on a Rabbit. Thank you to everybody who gave me some pointers and advice when I first started looking into this problem.

Cheers, Bryan Walton

Reply to
Bryan K. Walton

I had a horn that didn't work either. I did all the necessary checks from the steering wheel contact back to sanding clean the metal that the horn was bolted to. Still nothing. Then I turned the screw on the horn. This screw would in fact adjust the tone of the horn. So I turned it just a hair. Horn works fine.

Reply to
wrenchwench

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