How to ground Horn?

[94szki]

Hi,

I believe the wiring harness and control button are fine.
The horn has stopped working.
Can't seem to figure out how to properly 'ground' the horn.
I recall reading that a while ago somewhere online.

The plugs from the wiring harness seem to be soldered to the horn pins, so I doubt that connection is loose.

How do you properly ground the horn?

I disassembled the L bracket and had it powdercoated. There is a small phillips screw on the horn - no idea what it's purpose is. If it's supposed to be the ground, I have no idea where I'm supposed to ground it.

Battery is fully charged. Bike runs fine, starts fine. No problems with clutch safety or kick stand safety.

I am currently NOT running front turn signals. Would this impact the horn at all? I plan on adding them back one day but I haven't yet post front end rebuild. The turn signals blink faster now since I'm not running the front blinkers. Turn signal controls work fine though for the rear.

Thanks!

[94szki]

When I get home I will try to hook up the horn directly to the battery to see if it makes a noise.

I don't know if it matters which side I use as the positive or which one I use as the negative. If it makes a noise then I can figure out if the horn is faulty or not.

What do you guys think?

[hillsy]

Don't rule out corrosion in the button - quite often thus can reduce the voltage enough to make the horn inoperable. Screw is to adjust the diaphram (volume).

Testing straight on the battery will be fine. I don't think the polarity matters.

[Herb]

I just looked up the wiring diagram for the horn on a 96/97. According to the diagram, the horn has power all the time and the button provides the ground. Switches that provide a ground are VERY susceptible to corrosion problems as are all of the connections in the system. With the key on you should have power to the horn and you should be able to use a multimeter to check for a ground on the other wire when the button is pushed.

One other thing, the small phillips screw on the horn adjusts the tone of the horn.

[94szki]

I will try to use my car battery (with car off) to make the horn make a noise. I also have a new cheap ebay replacement horn that I am testing with. I tried to make this horn make a noise with the motorcycle trickle charger I have, but nothing.

I will try this new cheapy horn on the 12v car battery (with the car off). That should be enough juice for it.

Back to the bike.

So I did think to measure the horn voltage (with my primitive understanding of current). I had the bike off, but turned the ignition key to the on position. The horn leads had 0 voltage. However, when you hold down the horn button, the voltmeter showed 10 some volts!

My hunch now is that the leads/terminals on the horn itself need to be redone. As mentioned in my first post, I believe the previous owner tac/soldered these wires to each of the horn prongs. I'm not sure if this was from the factory this way or if it's something they did to prevent the horn from popping lose. I will crimp on the proper adapters for the prongs and see if that is the issue.