Excellent, your first little job to fix already!!
I assume your horn works (or rather should) with a push in the centre of the
wheel (late Spits, like mine, have the push on a column stalk). In that
case the wiring for the horn should go something like:
horn-(purple w/ yellow)-earth
/
Battery-(brown)-bottom fuse-(purple)-relay<
\
horn push-(purple w/
black)-earth
First job is to trace the route of the electricity! You need a tester - if
you don't have a multimeter (and they are #10 VERY well spent) make one up
with a bulb and two wires with bare ends or, better, crocodile clips at the
end.
First check your fuses. These are in a little box close to the battery.
There are 3 - one protects circuits that are only live with the ignition on
(heater, wipers, gauges), one protects the side-lights and rear lights, the
other protects circuits that are permanantly live - bottom one I think
(horn, cigarette lighter, courtesy lights that light when you open the
door). With ignition off, the permanantly-on fuse should be live on both
sides - if it is live one side only, the fuse is gone or has a poor
connection to the holder.
Second, clean all the terminals - dirty terminals cause a large proportion
of Spit maladies. I don't know where the horn relay sits - my Spit doesn't
have one. It is probably hanging around behind the gauges somewhere, that's
where most of them tend to be.
Next, do some investigation at the relay. Make sure the pure purple wire
coming in is live. Disconnect the terminal with the purple/black stripe
wire attached. Use a piece of wire to connect this terminal to a handy bit
of the body. If the horn blares then the problem is the horn push (or the
connection you have just disconnected.
If the horn doesn't blare then connect your test bulb between the terminal
with the purple/yellow wire, and earth. Then repeat the test above. If the
bulb lights then the relay is sound, and the problem must be in the horn or
the wiring to it. If the bulb does not light then the relay is bad and must
be replaced.
If the tests above indicate a dodgy horn, leave the wire connecting the
relay to earth in place, reconnect the purple/yellow wire and go have a look
around the horn. If the purple/yellow (like you can really see the colours
in this grubby, faded area) wire is not live there is a wire problem. Check
that there is a sound connection from the horn to a good earth point. If
both of these are OK then the horn itself needs replacing.
If the tests above indicate a dodgy switch, investigate that. If you remove
the cowling around the steering column (there are probably a couple of
screws accessible from below) you will expose a pad which rubs against a
ring connected to the steering wheel. Pull the horn push off and check all
the wiring in this region is sound. Check the steering column grounding
strap (at the lower end of the steering column where it enters the rack) -
if this is not in place the grounding-through-the-steering-column approach
will fail at the last hurdle!
Good luck, I'm sure you'll fix it!!
Richard & Daffy
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