Technical Horn issues on my 1.2 16v '02

[KK2B]

Hey there,

before i begin i want to say that i searched the forum for a few hours but i am a little too inept so follow the "advanced" troubleshoot advice i found without pictures...

So this week i had my Punto in a Garage to change the Electric steering motor and torque sensor which, where both faulty. Now the good thing is, power steering works perfectly again but they had to pull out the entire steering column and now the horn doesen't work (they didn't test that) i only found out yesterday when i tried to honk.

I went back and they took a look at the wiring inside the steering wheel again and said it was fine (i don't believe them...). Mechanic mentioned maybe it's the clock spring but i have no airbag light on.

Now i tried a few things i read on here:

- The horn WORKS directly from a battery.
- I listened for clicks from the horn relay. NO click when someone presses the steering wheel.
- I changed the horn fuse (was good but changed anyway) no change still NO relay click.
+ Can i use the other relay for the high beam to swap / test the horn ? looks the same to me.

I read something about bridging pins to test the horn but i couldn't do that without detailed instructions or pictures. Is it even possible that the clock spring is faulty but the airbag is fine without errors ?

Anyway i go back to that Garage after Christmas and they should search again if i dind't find anything myself. It worked perfectly before they pulled out the steering column for the last 20 years.

I appreciate any suggestions. It really angers me because they obviously broke something.

 

[lowaaa]

Did the garage take off the airbag and see the horn plugged in? Could just be it weren't plugged in or they could have bent one of the pins.

 

[KK2B]

They are plugged in afaik. Yesterday i swichted around a relay but that didn't help either. So it has to be something around the steering wheel which i make them take apart again.

Should the horn work if the horn cable pins inside the steering wheel (coming from the clockspring) are bridged ? i thought about that to rule out the copper pads of the push mechanism in the wheel itself.

 

[Mike1alike]

It could be just a coincidence that horn doesn't work after working on steering column. I had a problem with my horn and it was due to oxidized contacts of the horn and cables that connects to it. Cleaned those and the problem came back in a short time. Cleaned those again, problem back again shortly. Then, after cleaning them again I've put grease onto them, just regular, not special eletronical grease and it works fine since. It's more than 2 years ago.
For your problem take the cables out of the horn and connect a multimeter to them, see if there is voltage when someone pushes the horn. You can measure without taking the cables out, but, doing that myself, I can tell you that I got a really good scare, so I don't recommend, because I was looking very intrested at the multimeter screen and by pushing onto horn's contacts, made them connect and it worked.

 

[KK2B]

Thanks for the suggestions. It works again.
They forgot to close a cable cap ? inside the steering wheel so it had no contact... just your average sloppy mechanic job one would expect.

End of story.