1995 Lesabre Horn Constantly Engaged

[Gnomonic]

Hi All,
On my GFs 1995 Lesabre the horn is constantly engaged.

The solution up till now has been to unplug the horn at the speaker...thus no horn at all.

That is preferable to constant horn blowing, however.

I'd like to fix it...and I presume it is a problem with the switch in the steering wheel. However, when I start working on it I'm getting mighty close to the airbag, and I don't want to set that sucker off.

Any tips?

[Loekee75]

The horn relay must be faulty

[Gnomonic]

Amateur question...

Where is the horn relay located?

[Alibi]

I don't remember for sure on a '95, but it is either in a relay center in the engine bay or behind/under the hush panel/glovebox area.

[taser1984]

I had this problem on my 1994. If the steering colum or airbag have ever been removed there's a possibility there's a pinced wire behind the airbag. That was the problem on mine. There are two torx screws on the back of the steering wheel that hold the airbag in. I wouldn't worry excessively about setting it off, just be careful around any wires wrapped in yellow. The wires that control the horn are small and obvious once you take the airbag off.

The horn relay, which rarely goes bad, is located under the hood on the passenger side I have a diagram if you need it.

[Gnomonic]

Hey Taser,
Thanks for the info on this.

I did remove airbag (done it a few times now) and initially unhooked one of the two wires going to the switches on the front. That solved the problem temporarily making me think that only that switch was bad. At that point the right switch didn't work but the left switch did, but that was fine. I would just press on the left one if I needed the horn.

When I say switch I'm talking about what I assume is underneath the airbag cover where you are supposed to push to get the horn to sound. As far as I can tell these are completely inaccessible unless you dismantle the airbag or cut through the cover - neither of which I'm particularly willing to do.

However, several days later the horn started sounding by itself again, making me think that both switches are bad.

I did check the relay and it looked fine.

So...back to the drawing board...I unplugged the horn again and haven't had time to go back to it yet. I'll post if I discover anything new.

Thanks.

[kok328]

You can either swap the relay with any other like relay in the fuse/relay center to temporarily test the existing relay or go to your local parts store and spend about $18 on a new relay before you dig into the airbag area.

[TQuentin1]

Had the same problem after I had my LeS about a year (ex-Company car I bought a while back). I took the airbag module off the steering wheel and found the ribbon cable switch. My short seemed to be related to the heat (Texas) of summer. Since this car is a Hooptie anyway, I just put a cheap ($2) push button switch in series with the ribbon switch and mounted the push button on top of the air bag housing. Usually works with just the push button, but sometimes in the winter have to mash the original horn and push button.

[Gnomonic]

Hey this is almost precisely what I did, too. I should have followed up on the thread.

I disconnected both cables to the two switches (since they seemed to have a tag team short) and fed them outside the airbag housing to a push switch purchased from Radio Shack.

The switch is very gracefully taped to the steering wheel/airbag housing.

Hey it's enough to pass inspection.

Thanks everybody.

By the way...this does strike me as a GM design flaw...why enclose cheap switches in a place where they can't be replaced without replacing the entire air bag module. This is not the case with my 1992 Pontiac Firebird. When I take off the airbag module I can see the horn switches.