98 Escort Horn Problems

[oomchu]

I know this post is extremely old, but I thought I'd follow up in case anyone else has a similar problem. Ok, I finally had the time to look at the horn problem and it is now fixed.

The problem appears to have been the wire that is supposed to connect to ground. This wire is a red wire with a blue stripe coming out of the steering column. However within the steering column going into the wire harness it is a black wire with white stripe. I tried getting to where the wire connected to ground, but this wasn't possible without removing the entire dash.

Solution:

I cut the ground wire, spliced into it and just connected it directly to the negative battery terminal. Hey, whatever works right?

[Davescort97]

Hey Thanks for the follow up. I was wondering how it came out. Look for the easiest, most simple fix first. I need to take some of my own advice. Dave

[AzTumbleweed]

Since the horn doesn't work at the switch and the cruise control doesn't work I wonder if these two share a ground coming off the steering column? Just a wild guess.

I don't trust too many mechanics. Reader's Digest & 60 Minutes have done some great work exposing these frauds. My favorite was on 60 minutes where they filmed a 'mechanic' shooting oil onto the shocks of someone buying gas. Next thing you know they are getting four new ones. The mechanic tells them,"I wouldn't drive much further....." and they are ripped off.

Reader's Digest did an expose' where they disconnected a spark plug wire and took it to a shop. It would cost them hundreds of dollars to get it 'fixed'. Sometimes the mechs wouldn't even find the loose wire! To RD's credit they mentioned a couple garages that put the wire back on and said, "No charge". I think those days are gone

[oomchu]

Originally Posted by AzTumbleweed

Since the horn doesn't work at the switch and the cruise control doesn't work I wonder if these two share a ground coming off the steering column? Just a wild guess.

I don't trust too many mechanics. Reader's Digest & 60 Minutes have done some great work exposing these frauds. My favorite was on 60 minutes where they filmed a 'mechanic' shooting oil onto the shocks of someone buying gas. Next thing you know they are getting four new ones. The mechanic tells them,"I wouldn't drive much further....." and they are ripped off.

Reader's Digest did an expose' where they disconnected a spark plug wire and took it to a shop. It would cost them hundreds of dollars to get it 'fixed'. Sometimes the mechs wouldn't even find the loose wire! To RD's credit they mentioned a couple garages that put the wire back on and said, "No charge". I think those days are gone

Yeah, that was the problem. At the time I made the post I wasn't quite sure if the guy had disconnected something or which wire was the common ground. I haven't had a lot of time up until recently to diagnose this problem. Basically all I did was take apart the steering column and tested as many connections as I could with inexpensive multimeter. Once I thought about what could be going wrong, since none of the wires in the steering column appeared to be damaged, it was an easy fix.

Like I said in my original post, it's just a little weird that I took it to this guy and suddenly the horn doesn't work, where as it worked two days before when it passed inspection. He was quick to diagnose it as the horn relay despite the fact that I demonstrated to him the horn and relay worked fine. If he or someone else messed with it, I could find exactly what they did. Oh well, lesson learned. I feel kind of stupid because the water pump is an easy fix.