THE ROVER SD1 FORUM

10mpg

Ive been struggling for a few days now trying to get my horn on my mk2 vitesse to work after it mysteriously stopped working about 6 months ago...

The fuse is fine the horns themselves are fine and the switch is fine, the wiring appears to have no shorts so i am now a bit baffled...

Does anyone know if this system has a relay? because none of my 4 different rover manuals list one or show them in the wiring diagrams, if there is one could someone please tell me where it is.. as i also have no comprehensive list of all the relays and their locations, I presume this is only in the origional literature as it is not in any of my service manuals.

Also the nterior light/ fag lighter/underbonnet light curcuit keeps blowing 30 amp fuses i have removed the underbonnet lighting for re wiring in the future so the fault must be with the other 3 does anyone have any tips for what to check first? when functioning the interior light delay system works fine so I'm guessing the fault is elsewhere.

_________________
"A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five."
Groucho Marx

gillberry · Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 3:27 pm Post subject:

I had a similar problem re fuse blowing and wrongly assumed it was due to the underbonnet wiring (plays up) it turned out to be the cigarette lighter earthing out . When you pull it out if the connection is bent wrong it will touch the body . I would look here first . It is also the easiest to check .

Chris P

10mpg wrote:

Ive been struggling for a few days now trying to get my horn on my mk2 vitesse to work after it mysteriously stopped working about 6 months ago...

The fuse is fine the horns themselves are fine and the switch is fine, the wiring appears to have no shorts so i am now a bit baffled...

Does anyone know if this system has a relay? because none of my 4 different rover manuals list one or show them in the wiring diagrams, if there is one could someone please tell me where it is.. as i also have no comprehensive list of all the relays and their locations, I presume this is only in the origional literature as it is not in any of my service manuals.

Also the nterior light/ fag lighter/underbonnet light curcuit keeps blowing 30 amp fuses i have removed the underbonnet lighting for re wiring in the future so the fault must be with the other 3 does anyone have any tips for what to check first? when functioning the interior light delay system works fine so I'm guessing the fault is elsewhere.

Funnily enough, I've had a similar issue with my late Vitesse. I
was getting an intermittent fault on the horns - sometimes it
was fine, sometimes it'd just click a bit. I traced this finally to what I
thought was a duff horn unit. But both the 'duff' and a replacement
horn worked OK when jumpered to the battery.... The OEM horns are
Mixo units (at least on my car) - low and high notes.

The fault is resistance in the horn wiring somewhere - either the wiring
itself, connectors, earthing or the horn switch. There is no horn relay,
it's wired directly from the steering column switch.

Cleaning up the original horn unit guts and wiring connections, the horn
system is far more reliable. It's not perfect though, so I suspect there is
muck in the steering column switch.

As for your fuse blowing - the horns are on the same circuit. I'd start
tracing the horn wiring and check for chafing somewhere in the engine
bay or bulkhead, or maybe around the steering wheel (the horn push
switch). Guessing, maybe the feed to the horn switch is chafed through
and intermittently shorting on bodywork - blowing the 30A fuse.

Good luck!

chris_derby · Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 10:13 pm Post subject:

I had the same problem as gillberry, & it was the fag lighter that was to blame. Replaced that & the horns worked fine!
As forthe horns, the horns on both my Vitesse & my old 2600 VDP didn't work, & I traced it to dirty contacts on the horns themselves. They are in a truly stupid place & get coved in all kinds of crap & get dirty quite quickly. Give them a clean with some emery cloth or sandpaper & squirt a bit of WD40 into the connectors & they should work OK.
Failing that, get some air horns!