So this story starts about 2 years ago when i wake up to the sound of my horn going off at 2am. It was a solid beeeeeep rather than the beep beep beep that an alarm would make. And to be clear, my truck (2006 F250 6.0 PSD CCLB) is all stock and has no aftermarket security system. I dont remember what steps I tried to get the horn to stop going off, but I do remember getting frustrated and punching the airbag/horn and the horn just stopped. Thinking everything was fine, I went back to sleep. Shortly after that, I noticed that my horn would only work intermittenly, and my cruise control stopped working. None of that bothered me until recenlty when I noticed the airbag light staying on when I turned on the truck. After doing some research here on the forum, I decided to replace the clock spring.

Fast forward to 48 hours ago, I replace the clock spring in my truck and as soon as I reconnect the negative terminal on my battery, the horn starts going off again like it did that night 2 years ago. At this point I needed to go to bed so just left my airbag off the steering wheel and thought I would just put everything back together and leave a bare steering wheel. Once I got everything buttoned up, I went to start the truck and it wouldnt turn over. It just kind of clicked, the lights (inside and out) were flickering and the engine wouldnt turn over. I ended up pulling the batteries and the alternator to take to autozone the next day to be tested.

I ended up getting mixed results from autozone. first they said the batteries were fine, roughly 55% each, and the alternator "passed." When I came back to pick up the batteries from chargin, I was told that the batteries were charged, but the cells wouldnt hold a charge and so the batteries were bad and should be replaced. i went to walmart to try and get them replaced under the warranty to no avail. So i ended up keeping them and decided to try and reinstall everything and see if it worked.

After reinstalling the alternator and the batteries, the truck starts up and runs fine now. I have no idea if the horn issues are related to the battery.alternator issue i had.

In summary i am confused as to what happened and how to fix it. Most of the threads ive seen for horn issues have to do with alarm problems. combine that with the fact that i have no idea where to start with electrical issues, i have sort of half fixed my horn, airbag, and cruise control problem.

any help or advice is greatly appreciated.

thanks

 

Well, chances are that your battery issue was something that stayed on after you pulled your airbag and clock spring. I would have just charged it back up since there were no issues before any work was done to it. Second, pounding on the airbag shouldn't have stopped a clock spring problem. That being said clocksprings can go bad from time to time. Is everything working now? If not what isn't still working? If everything is fine now then just let it go. You probably had a bad clock spring and the batteries were a separate unrelated issue. You may never know why the batteries discharged.

Think about it this way. This didn't happen until you worked on the column and clock spring. I always believed that if you do action A and it creates result B then undo action A and start all over. In your case action A was working on your steering column and actions B were a repair of the horn and cruise control but with a dead battery. Right now I would just chock the battery issue up to something you overlooked and left on when you quit working that night.

Edit to add: Your post makes it sound like you worked on this with the batteries connected. There's no way I would have done that. Too many things that could go wrong and detonate that airbag.

 

Sounds like the horn contact bladder is bad. The good news it's a fairly easy fix. The horn honking by itself is actually fairly common on these era trucks. 2002 - 2007. Disconnect the battery remove the air bag/horn pad and the bladder sits behind the pad cover. It's common enough that Dorman even makes replacement horn contact bladders.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/For-2002-20...gAAOSwfHFbn9yZ

 

The horn bladder issue wouldn't have caused his cruise control to quit working.

 

Have you considered the horn relay might be causing the horn issue instead of the clockspring?

 

Sorry to confuse you, the issue now is that when I have the airbag installed with the new clock spring the horn will just go off until I disconnect the negative terminal. The way I have the truck now is everything installed except the air bag. I also most definitely did not work on this with the batteries connected. The one thing that I did kind of goof up on, was when I was putting everything back together I forgot that I had removed the ignition and it was in the "on" poisition. So when I went to reconnect the negative terminal on my driver side battery it gave a little spark and that was when the horn started blaring.

 

Now I am confused! So, did you replace the spring because the horn started honking and the cruise quit working? Is the cruise working now? Right now as I understand it if you plug the horn wiring into the airbag/horn pad the horn will start honking. If you have a ohm meter you can test continuity between prongs on the horn connector. A shorted horn switch will show 0 ohms resistance. If that's so then I would replace the horn switch assembly as shown above. FWIW, connecting the battery with the ignition on can cause a myriad of issues. If your truck is running and everything else is working fine then I wouldn't worry about the sparking.

. Make sure you connect the ohmmeter to the horn switch connector and not the airbag connection. I understand it doesn't take much to make a airbag go boom...

Edit to add: You can connect the horn wiring without disconnecting battery. That way you will know if sparking on battery terminal didn't cause false horn activation.

 

I'm still leaning towards the horn bladder being the culprit to the horn staying on. Since you have the airbag assembly out of the truck ohm out the connector on the horn bladder. If you're showing continuity it's definitely the horn bladder. If it shows open it's NOT the bladder.
As Fefanatic pointed out the horn bladder or contact has NOTHING to do with the clock spring (I knew this) but that doesn't mean you didn't have multiple issues. A quick check with an ohm meter will confirm or eliminate the horn contact.

My daily driver - my commute car with 300,000 miles - the multi function switch went out turning on the fog lights at random. Within days the clock spring went out so my cruise control & horn wouldn't work and the airbag light came on. The horn would beep when I locked the car so I knew it was the clock spring. Less than a week after that the ABS light came on. None of these are related (multi function switch, clock spring & ABS) but stuff happens.

 

Ok sorry, let me try this a different way.
1. 2 years ago I noticed the horn would sometimes work when I pressed it and the cruise control didnt work at all. Then the horn incident in the middle of the night happened and the horn didnt work at all unless prompted by the panic button or the lock button on my keys. This didnt really bother me because I rarely used either of these features.

2. About a month ago the air bag light came on. That concerned me so I did some research and concluded it was a faulty clock spring.

3. Wednesday evening I replaced the clock spring. This was also when the "spark" happened while reconnecting the batteries. This was also when the horn just continuously went off again. The airbag was connected but the horn was not being touched and it was still going off. I disconnected the negative terminal and removed the air bag so I could go to sleep.

4. Went to start the truck and it wouldnt start. Just clicking when I tried to turn it over, but headlights, dash lights, radio, etc. all came on when ignition was turned on. I removed batteries and alternator so I could have them tested the next day.

5. Thursday after work I had the batteries and alternator tested at Autozone and they said the batteries were fine and had roughly 50% charge left in each and the alternator was good.

6.Friday I took the batteries back to Autozone to see if they could charge them for me. When I came back to get them, they told me the batteries were bad. They are walmart batteries from 09/2016 and have a 3 year warranty. Took them to walmart who said they have to try and charge them before they can replace them. They came back after charging and said they were fine. So I thought I would just throw everything back in on Saturday and see if I could get the truck to start up before I start looking at the starter as being the culprit (Friday was 10 yr anniversary for the wife and I so I didnt work on the truck) Also, keep in mind I havent touched anything with the clock spring or horn since I tried to go to sleep Wednesday night.

7. Saturday after work I come home and install the alternator and batteries. I disconnected the cable that runs to the starter from the passenger side battery and touched it to the positive terminal on that same battery and the truck started up. (im assuming this means the starter is good??) I thought everything was fine. I drive it Saturday night to do different errands and dinner and have no problems with truck starting. I am not paying attention to clock spring or cruise control and air bag is still disconnected and sitting in my garage.

8. Today I reinstall the airbag to see if I can get the error to reoccur and possibly film it for you all, but it works fine. Horn honks only when I press it and doesnt go off on its own. From what I can tell the cruise control lights are working, so I assume it works but I havent tried to use it yet. After I put everything back together, the truck wont start again. Same as Wednesday night. Lights on, click click click click......

9. I had my neighbor jump start me and I moved the truck around to the front of the house so my wife can use the garage to park.

As of this moment I believe everything is fixed with the clock spring and horn and cruise control. Now I am just having trouble with the batteries.... I think??

I hope that clears things up a bit more for you.

QUOTE=HearseDriver;18531707]I'm still leaning towards the horn bladder being the culprit to the horn staying on. Since you have the airbag assembly out of the truck ohm out the connector on the horn bladder. If you're showing continuity it's definitely the horn bladder. If it shows open it's NOT the bladder.
As Fefanatic pointed out the horn bladder or contact has NOTHING to do with the clock spring (I knew this) but that doesn't mean you didn't have multiple issues. A quick check with an ohm meter will confirm or eliminate the horn contact.

My daily driver - my commute car with 300,000 miles - the multi function switch went out turning on the fog lights at random. Within days the clock spring went out so my cruise control & horn wouldn't work and the airbag light came on. The horn would beep when I locked the car so I knew it was the clock spring. Less than a week after that the ABS light came on. None of these are related (multi function switch, clock spring & ABS) but stuff happens.[/QUOTE]

I dont have an Ohm meter so I wouldnt be able to test it.

On another note, now when I use my turn signal indicator it wount automatically switch off when the wheel turns. I have to manually turn off the indicator each time I make a turn. I kno its not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but I dont know if there is something I messed up when doing the clock spring.

I know I'm being difficult with all of this but I really appreciate your input and time.


Thank you!

 

So, as I understand it you disconnect just one of the batteries when you did the work. That wouldn't have isolated the electrical system while you were working on it. What it sounds like to me is your batteries are not very good anymore and if there is any kind of drain such as interior lights while you were working on it then the battery you were still operating on is weak and drained quickly. If you have both batteries hooked up and charged then park it overnight and see if they start it in the morning.

FWIW, it sounds like you have the horn/cruise/airbag issues resolved. Now, go buy a couple of good batteries and install them. You should be GTG..

 

 

UPDATE

Truck started easily on its own this morning after being jumped yesterday evening. I took it to walmart to have them check out the batteries. They tested the batteries and the alternator and said everything came back good. Here are the specs from the recept of the tests they ran:

Battery test:
- voltage = 12.59v
- measured = 941 cold crank amps
- rated = 700 cold crank amps
- temperature = -40F
- "GOOD BATTERY"
Not sure which battery these results are for, the receipt didnt specify.

Starter Test:
- Voltage = 10.80v
- Time = 3.04s
- "CRANKING NORMAL"

Charging System Test
- No load = 13.78v
- Load = 13.68v
- "NO PROBLEMS"

Make of that what you will....

What do you all think? Should I just bite the bullet and get new batteries somewhere else, or should I keep an eye on it and maybe buy a battery charger for the house???


Thanks

 

Hard decision on that one. I ended up purchasing a GooLoo jump pack off eBay. The add says it will start up to a 6.0 Diesel and an 8.0 gas. It's small enough I keep it in my glove box. It's been a life saver. I haven't had to jump my f-250 with it but I've jump started a 24 Volt Skip Loader with it (hooked to only one of the two 12 Volt batteries). I've jumped my 71 Caddy Hearse 472 C.I. or 7.7 liters - however you want to look at it. The Caddy battery didn't even show 2 volts on the VOM and fired right up. I bought my 06 F250 used & have no idea how old the battery is but my luck is my vehicles batteries rarely go dead at home. I'm guessing 2 new batteries from Walmart will run about $300.00 out the door after taxes. A GooLoo is around $80.00 off eBay. here's a link:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/GOOLOO-1000...frcectupt=true

 

was it a bad ground?