i don't have a jeep, i have a '94 honda del slo* with a non-functional horn. yes, a slow go kart that goes on the freeway with no beeps; safe right? cool, let's fix that.
did some googles because for this beauty i need to rely on forums, wiring diagrams, car manuals, etc., and came across a post that gave me everything i needed, and this still took me longer than necessary because of course it did - it's linked below.
i started with removing the steering wheel cover and the dash panel below that covers the steering column to access the yellow srs harness. if you have an aftermarket steering wheel it should be hanging loose under the dash. note, i have an nrg wheel.
looking at the harness, you're at pin 6 (horn) and we'll be using both the top and bottom port.
what we need to do is connect this loose harness to the connected steering wheel. nrg steering wheel hubs, and steering wheels come standard with the necessary horn connectors, so once you've replaced your steering wheel hub and connected everything as needed we can move onto the fun stuff.
take some speaker wire, and run it down the steering wheel column - we only need one wire, i used 18g because it's what i had laying around. you should use a connector, but i just split the wire into 2 and connected them into both ports under pin 6 and wrapped it in electrical tape. i'll clean this up another time.
the quick release the has two male to female connectors that connect to the hub - ground and live. this is where the speaker wire that's going into pin 6 needs to be connected to the live wire by any means necessary. get creative with it! my hub came with a flat positive male to female connector, so i flattened the speaker wire into the female end and then connected the male lead to complete the circuit.
at this point, you should not be hearing any sound. if you are, check your connections and use your multimeter to test the the metal contacts on the quick release. you should be getting a read of 12V aka your car battery, and if you touch a wire to those same contacts you should hear your horn. got it? cool. no? something else to check is the direction of the metal contacts and screws on the wire board - they need to match up on the hub and quick release. mine were mismatched at first so i needed to unscrew the wire board on the quick release and rotate it 180 degrees to get it to make contact. screws to screws, contacts to contacts.
now the horn button itself has two male connectors. one for the female live (positive) wire from the steering wheel, and another male ground connector also from the steering wheel which again, connect by any means necessary. for this, my male grounds on both ends had a hole in the middle of the lead so i took some speaker wire and connected them that way. then tested with the multimeter again and got a read of 12V, another complete circuit.
this is where it should've been simple to wrap up, but i overcomplicated the process by not remembering or applying basic electronics. when i pressed the horn it beeped, when i went to fit the horn into the wheel to lock it in i got shocked, and the horn wouldn't stop going off. i thought it could possibly be a trippy contact so i removed the horn fuse, connected the steering wheel, horn, etc. and went back to connect the fuse. the second it made contact the horn wouldn't stop - clearly this is a contact issue, but i felt like poking further than necessary and took everything apart again.
the horn was working like it should when i pressed the button, it wasn't working properly when the horn was locked into the steering wheel. why? because the metal contacts and wiring in and around the steering wheel and horn button were all touching, causing a constant power supply to the horn as if the button were being pressed.
i'm sure there's a cleaner way to handle this, but i used electrical tape to cover the ground wiring, the metal connectors, and the metal piece on the horn button that holds it in place on the steering wheel. all of this obviously conducts electricity, so the electrical tape helped to isolate these contacts.
once everything was isolated and connected, i took a multimeter to the hub, steering wheel, and horn button and got all 12V reads. i put the horn into it's location on the steering wheel, no noise (electrical tape seems to be working), screwed everything back into the steering wheel, and finally "beeeeeeeeeeeep"upon press!! no more constant contact, no more being invisible on the freeway especially at night.
enjoy some links, enjoy the doodle circuit.
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