As long as I've owned this car I've hated how difficult it is to beep the horn. It seemed I darn near had to stand on the Wheel pad to activate the d___thing!
Well, last night, my battery died (original battery that came w/ the car; not too bad 5 yrs old) and I had too get a new one and therefore turn off the power system. So I figured this was the opportune time (0 deg F, mind you) to remove the airbag and check what needed to be done w/ the horn.
I removed the 4 compression springs that are part of the horn system. Noticed they needed a fair amount of force to compress them. So took a ride to the local hardware and found a similar dimensioned spring, but lighter wire and therefore less force to compress them.
Bought 1/2 doz (.40@) and raced home to install them!
Put the car back together, checking the contact force before I reinstalled the airbag; and then installed the battery.
The horn works great!!!
I'm not sure if the spring code is the same in all h'ware stores, but this spring is a #90
The difference in loads:
Original spring needed greater than 10 lbs to compress it <1/2"
The #90 needed 3 lbs to compress it 3/4"
Seems Ford should have used a much lighter spring; probably would have saved them a lot, too. ($1000??? ha ha)
Anyway, it's not a difficult task, and perhaps someoneā??s written it up already.
If you do decide to change the springs, make sure you disconnect both battery terminals so as not to activate the airbag. Not sure it's necessary, but better to be safe.
Good luck!
