• Hey Guest!
    British Car Forum has been supporting enthusiasts for over 25 years by providing a great place to share our love for British cars. You can support our efforts by upgrading your membership for less than the dues of most car clubs. There are some perks with a member upgrade!

    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Upgraded members don't see this banner, nor will you see the Google ads that appear on the site.)
Tips
Tips

Horn Assembly...not the steering part

Tr3aguy

Jedi Knight
Country flag
Offline
Two things...
1) Does anybody have a good close up photo of a TR3 horn assembly.

2) Does anyone have a breakdown on dissassembly for the assembly as well. Mine had clipped wires and I am trying to reconstruct/cleanup


Thanks
 
I presume you mean the big windtone horns them selves?? I have a high note in my hand. The Brown wire is on the "upper" of the two connections, Brown/Green on the other. I doubt it matters as I think the connections are electrically isolated from the horn body.Make sure that the pin that moves the points is free to move. You may need to disassemble to do that, just make sketches of how it comes apart. I usually run a drill bit down the hole by hand just to make sure there is no grit, or solidified grease, and clean the pin really well. Connect up to a battery (Large gauge wire, the horns draw a lot of currect), and adjust the points for maximum sound.

Hope this helps a little
 
Tr3aguy said:
Two things...
1) Does anybody have a good close up photo of a TR3 horn assembly.

these may help - from a friend's website:
DSC05136_small.jpg

DSC05135.jpg

2) Does anyone have a breakdown on dissassembly for the assembly as well. Mine had clipped wires and I am trying to reconstruct/cleanup
here's a write-up from Lucas. it was used to train their mechanics
Lucas_Horns.jpg



Thanks
 
I am also getting ready to work on my horns non operable for a long time. What site did those pics come from? I am going to remove clean and adjust then check out all wiring. I was able to get a faint beep for a very short time yesterday so I am hoping that they will only need to be spruced up. I have a pos grounded car how should I bench test these?
 
Hey Eric!

The service manual gives a few paragraphs on how to adjust these horns. I can copy it for you if you haven't got access to the manual. If you are not "beeping" it is most likely the electrical contacts are dirty/burned. Second would be the air gap. Both are relatively easy to fix. The manual even specifies regular maintenance of "oiling" the pushrod regularly...Ah, the good old days, when you had a service interval for your horn!

_DSC5377.jpg

Here's what a little bead blast and fresh paint can do.

I just used a couple jumper wires from the battery (mine is still out of the car) to test the horns. They do use a lot of current, so use a decent gage wire (like 16 or less). There are no semi-conductors involved, so I don't think you can hurt anything if you accidentally reverse the polarity...and it will honk either way.

Good luck,

John
 
I think you can get a repro of the horn manual from bestbritbooks on eBay for about $10 including shipping.

Scott
 
Thanks everyone....I am on track....good information as always. The pictures sure did help out as well. Nice work on the cleanup. I have got one cleaned as well, just need to paint. The wire was clipped so I just need to add an extension...
 
Thanks I have a manual just haven't read that part yet. I'll see what's going on when I get a chance to get them out and do some investigating.
 
I've just rebuilt my horns. I found that one was working well and the other was sucking double (about 16-18 amps) the quoted current. I cleaned the contacts and adjusted as recommended in the manual and it was only marginally better. A list member suggested adding some penetrating-type oil to the "plunger" to ensure it was moving freely. Cured the problem. Oil to both horns, both sound great, and both now draw between 6 and 8 amps for my WT618 horns.

Cheers, Mike

LubPointShown.jpg


FinshedTested.jpg
 
Good info. thanks
 
It only took about an hour to get out the last of the bolts on the other side....that side was rusty....

Before...


5580085144_db8b76640e_b.jpg


During..

5580085216_a1305e8406_b.jpg



The after will be shortly....I have a 4yr old that I promised he could help me paint them...
 
When I dismantled my 1958 TR3A in 1987 for restoration, the horns weren't working. I scraped out a lot of crud from both intakes. The crud was a mixture of sand and gravel from 6 years of rallying on gravel roads plus the dried salt crystals from 8 or 10 years of winter driving in the salty slush, all of which had combined to form a solid crust in both horns. They have been working just fine for the last 21 years of summer driving on paved roads after cleaning it all out.
 
great keep up with the pics I hope to get mine out in the coming week.
 
Back
Top