Hello All:

1967 Volvo 122S wagon. I have been trying to get the horn working on this car. The previous owner told me the trouble was with the foam spacer in the horn ring. I took the ring assembly apart and indeed, there was basically hardened clay where the foam ring once was. I cleaned to a shiny finish literally every piece of the ring assembly, inserted my new foam spacer as suggested elsewhere, and reassembled the beast. Still no horn.

I have traced the electricals as diagramed in the manual and everything seems right: brown and black from the passenger side horn, merging with another brown and black at the driver side horn, the black goes into the steering box where it emerges from the wheel at the spring wrapped contact piece which contacts the steering wheel. On the brown side, it goes into a multi connector, emerging out the other side and into a wire harness that feeds it to fuse 2 in the fusebox. I know that when you activate the horn the connection goes to ground at the steering wheel and the horns should sound, but no such luck. I took off the ring assembly and tried to make a connection between the wire end contact and a grounded part of the car but again, no luck. I also tried to bypass each horn by removing the brown and black wires from each and completing the circuit by holding the wire ends together. Yes, with an assistant activating the horn and yes, with the ignition on.

I am satisfied that the wiring is correct which makes me wonder if the horns themselves are the problem. It seems unlikely to me since the car is in incredible original condition (less than 80K original miles) and everything else works, absolutely everything else.

I have a multimeter and I am ready to start testing every component but I am not sure how to do it. I understand the basics of electricity including having read the SWEM piece but I have rarely used my multimeter before. Right now I am getting millivolts across the horns. What do I check? Voltage or current? How do I test each of these horns as well as the other components in the system?

Cheers,

Jeff Pucillo