Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

hey guys or gals need some help replaced high & low tone horns thinking it was the horn but guess not replaced relay not either will only click & slight chirp. cleaned all contacts still the same checked battery has 12.9 volts. ran new ground wire by passed horn switch. still the same. help!!!! ready to pull out my hair. 20' monarch 40 force

I replaced mine with a coaches whistle which our lake gestapo prefers

might be a good excuse to install one of these

http://www.trainhornkits.com/
doc

Lakes use to be quite and peaceful, boom boxes and now train horns , ovy vey, now you know why I like to boat in the middle of the week, when you can see the wild life.

HandymanHerb wrote:Lakes use to be quite and peaceful, boom boxes and now train horns , ovy vey, now you know why I like to boat in the middle of the week, when you can see the wild life.

yep, can remember when if you had a 30 watts stereo you were kicking ass. Now we are at 3000 watts. Glad we don't have many of those around our area. The train horn, is kinda like carrying a gun, hope you don't need it but its there for those special people that needed to be shown the err of there ways. Was looking at some of the air horns on marine sites and ran across the train horn idea. Might as well go all the way if you get one.
doc

I know you be responsible user, well unless you really wanted to scare someone

It's just the thought of laying back with a fishing pole in my hands thinking what a nice day it is when WTF, where's the tater gun lake left here for such use

Damn if this topic did not get off track. It was funny though when I read the title I thought who the hell cares. You cant hear those damn horns anyway unless you have been run over by the boat blowing his. Most people in the boat don't hear it when its blown. Unless you have a truck or train horn no one can hear it anyway. I don't know why there required.

lets get this back on track - Good that you replaced the ground but you may have excess voltage drop in the hot side wiring. Was helping my boss with horn on his sailboat. He assumed his horn was bad and we replaced it - click, chirp, then nothing - replaced ground wire and had same thing. Troubleshooting revealed voltage drop in hot wiring due to corrosion. You should have battery voltage (maybe a few tents of a volt less) at the horn when operating.

You should check the voltage available at the horn when the button is pushed. A cheap automotive type volmeter will work for this. There should be battery voltage at the hot horn connection when you push the button. If the voltage is much less than 12 volts you have a problem. This problem could be because of corrosion or partially broken hot wire. It could also occur if you have replaced the old horn with a louder horn that draws more amps. If so you will need to increase the wire size and supply fuse for it to work properly.

Hope this helps.

I did this with my old cuddy cabin boat. Disconnect the wires from the horn at its location. Take a portable 12v battery and make a temporary wire harness, connect the temporary wires right to the horn. If the horn works, then trouble shoot backwards from this point. Makes sure your boat battery is fully charge.