Was driving down the road and the horn started going off for no reason, had to pull out on the steering wheel a little to get it to shut off, and now it won't work. I have tried the fuses and looking for a loose wire and can't find anything. Please Help.
Did you pull the steering wheel off the shaft? If not, you won't be able to tell anything. Sounds like the cable going through has been worn through/broken. Likely wore through until it touched something, which set it "off" but still intact, then your tugging pulled it enough to completely break what little was still intact. Should be a very simple wire splice once the steering wheel is off (that's the hard part).
Testimonial: "No I didn't do that but will have that checked out now. Thank you for your help. I will post and let you know if that fixed the problem."
Hi jennifer, i think it may be an issue of a soda spilled. so the way the horn works is there are contacts that need to touch for it to work, and that we do by pushing the center pice of the airbag or the buttons on the side. if your horn got stuck in the on position then the airbag part may got glued because there was soda drying up in the cracks. also if you pulled on the steering wheel, you may have disconnected it in another spot (its the spot that allows you to turn the steering wheel with contacts sliding on the receiver plate with tracks for those contacts(i dont know the exact name for it) -that eliminates the wires the christexan reffered to as being broken so there are no wires that brake from constant left right turning of the steering wheel) so by pulling you may have lifted them from the receiver plate and horn stopped working if you were to push the steering wheel back your horn will work again but then you have to pull on the airbag or the button to make it stop. that is based on the assumption that the horn got stuck because the button or the center piece didnt retrieve back
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PATS does not blow the horn. Pull the horn fuse to see if that stops the draw. Then troubleshoot the horn circuit to see where the power is coming from. You can start at the horn relay. The relay gets a ground signal from the horn switch in the steering wheel. If that signal is constant, the problem is upstream of the relay--perhaps within the steering wheel. Do not remove the steering wheel to troubleshoot without disarming the airbag.
Most likely wire inside steering column has rubbed a bare spot and is shorting. Short term fix is disconnect horns. Might check horn relay first by tapping with broom handle of such.
If you stop the horn then your car is no longer road worthy. You have a short circuit, most probably by the steering wheel itself where the wire to the horn connects the horn button. Remove steering wheel and inspect contact strip first.
That must be the horn relay. Is it a white cube with 4 terminals? I would pull off the horn pad from the steering wheel and check the horn operation from there. Maybe a metal strip has come out of place or got bent and making horn work by itself.
i would guess the switch in the steering wheel has an intermittent short, i.e. sometimes it "hits" itself without any touching. this is not rare. so you need to find a new horn switch, not easy on a 13 year old car, and i would stay away from junkyards as those switches are just as old. any GM dealer should be able to put you onto a GM NOS parts site, if there are any, the switches are common across many models and years. i know you can get them for old 90s saturns as i just replaced one.
generally you are going to have to disable the airbag and take the cosmetic cover off the steering wheel to replace the switch. you can usually find a youtube video of someone doing this. again any late 90s model GM product is going to be about the same so do not fret if you cannot find a 98 buick video.
Remove horn button from steering wheel, pull apart and see if the foam between the plates is deteriorated. that keeps the horn from going off. i had similar problem in my 88 mustang, also horn relay may be bad and stiking on if horn button is not the problem
The steering wheel needs to pulled off, there is a short somewhere in there. Better have it done, cause if it isn't done right, the air bag can deploy.
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