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Horn wiring or new horns for old

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M

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I hope you can help me from blowing up my car... or something to that effect.

I have two new windtone horns that I want to install in my 58TR3. The old horns are corroded beyond use, so they need rebuilding or replacment (preferred).

Question is this: The new horns have two wires leading from them, red (hot) and black. The old horns have two wires leading from them: brown with green tracer and brown with black tracer. The TR3 wiring diagram shows the brown with green tracer going back to the fuse box (power). I assume, then, that the brown with green tracer should be connected to the red wire on the new horn.

The brown with black appears to connect the two horns, and logically it should be connected to the black wire on the new horn. HOWEVER, having been told that brown always means "hot" (power), I am a little reluctant to start connecting wires until I've checked this out.

Has anyone made this switch of horns?
 
Aloha Lex,

The Brown/Green is the hot wire in the wiring harness and the brown/black wire connects the two horns to the steering column harness up to the horn button in the control head. The horns are wired so that they always have a power source, and sound when you provide a path to ground by pushing the horn button. The horn button grounds and completes the circuit.

The brown/green wire may always be hot unless the battery is disconnected. I recommend you check this before you start wiring the horns.

I believe in your case connecting the horn red wires to the car's brown/green and the black to the brown/black is the way to make it work. I don't think the horns are polarity sensitive so either way should be safe.
 
To elaborate (well why not?) I think a black tracer usually indicates a switched ground with the main color indicating the circuit in question.

For example, on some TR3As the wiper motor is controlled by a switched ground so the wire from the switch is green (it's on the green circuit) with a black tracer.

I believe Dave's got it right and is also correct that either way will work (assuming these are true windtome horns and the body of the horn is not a ground).
 
:iagree:

You can cut the power to the brown/green wire by removing the associated fuse, but it's probably safer to just remove the ground strap from the battery.
 
Dave: Great. Your information confirms what I thought was right, but am too inexperienced to trust my judgment just yet.

Randall: I have a shut-off switch that cuts off the battery, and I always cut it off when working on any of the wiring, and especially the horn, which receives power even when the ignition switch is turned off.

I will replace the old horns with the new ones and hope the whole thing works.

George: The horns were purchased from Moss a couple of week ago, and they were advertised as reproduction windtone horns. I called Moss to confirm this before I purchased the horns. So I should be good to go.
 
Hang on to the old horns. I've got 7 of my own that have been mud caked and rusty for decades. After cleaning them a little and dressing up the points, 6 of them work. If I can sort out powder paint on them w/o screwing up the electrics in the heating process I'll be a very happy camper.
 
One of the favorite things about my TR3 is the sound of the horns... Good Luck with your new ones!
 
After much research and learning about bullet connections, etc., etc., I replaced my old Windtone horns with new ones today. Turns out one of the old horns had a short somewhere in it, causing the horns to malfunction.

All went well following all the good advice I received here. The only surprise was to find that a soldering iron will not heat a bullet hot enough to melt solder into the front of a crimped bullet. It takes a butane micro torch. This means that any electrical work that I do in the car itself will probably be limited to crimping the bullets because I don't want to use a butane torch in the car.

The sound, Kevin, is great. I agree.

And, yes, I intend to keep the old ones.... After all, I am from Virginia where they never throw anything away.
 
Wait Ed, that's a Virginia thing? I thought I just inherited the packrat compulsion from my parents. :smile:

Scott
 
LexTR3 said:
The only surprise was to find that a soldering iron will not heat a bullet hot enough to melt solder into the front of a crimped bullet. It takes a butane micro torch.
Click to expand...

After just wiring an XLR snake on Tuesday night with a new Weller multi-temp solder station, I try and melt the solder into the hole, and not necessarily heat the bullet itself too much... it helps tinning the wires a touch, too...

Enjoy those horns, Ed!
 
Kevin and Randall,

I used my brand new Weller soldering gun and an older wand type Weller to try to heat the bullet heads, but no luck at all with either. The soldering irons hardly warmed the bullet, much less made them hot enough to melt solder. So I spoke with a technical guy at British Wiring and he said that I had to use the butane torch; that a soldering iron won't heat the bullet enough to melt the solder.

Well, since some of you are having luck with the soldering irons, I'll try the Weller again.

I was also told that if I try to melt the solder itself into the hole, rather than heating the bullet and having it melt the solder, that the connection will not be good (?) And, the British Wiring guy said that if I am going to crimp and solder, that I must crimp first (no soldering at all before crimping) and then solder down the hole in the front of the buller. Otherwise, he said, the crimp will damage the soldered connection. (?) Well.... as I've said before, opinions and experiences vary widely with these cars.

Scott: evidently you never heard the old tale: How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: two. Reason: It takes one to change the bulb and another to sing the praises of the old bulb.
 
LexTR3 said:
I was also told that if I try to melt the solder into the hole, rather than heating the bullet and having it melt the solder, that the connection will not be good (?)
Click to expand...
That's a standard caution, to try to avoid "cold" solder joints. But you also need a layer of molten solder between the gun tip and the wire/bullet, for good heat transfer.

So, start by making sure your gun tip is properly 'tinned', meaning it has a coating of solder stuck to it. Any bare spots (which usually turn black, making them easy to see) will need to be dressed lightly with a file and re-tinned. The tip also has to be dressed back to shape from time to time as it slowly erodes with use. Eventually it will have to be replaced.

Also check that the nuts that hold the legs of the tip to the prongs of the gun are good and tight. After many cycles of use, the joint between the copper legs of the tip and the prongs of the gun can sometimes develop a layer of copper oxide which interferes with conduction. If the gun isn't heating properly, you may need to loosen and retighten those nuts to break through the oxide.

The wire also needs to be clean and bright, the color of a new penny rather than the brown of an old penny. I've recently started experimenting with using Tarn-X to remove the oxide from old wires, but I don't know if that is a good idea or not. The time-honored method is to spread out the strands of wire and scrape the oxide off each strand with a knife.

Then what I do is pull the trigger as I pick the gun up, and apply the gun tip so it presses against both the end of the bullet and the protruding end of the wire. Wait just a heartbeat or so, then apply the solder to the side of the intersection of gun tip, bullet and wire. Watch for the point where the solder melts and gets sucked into the joint, which will usually also be accompanied by a wisp of smoke from the rosin burning off. Remove the gun tip and don't touch the bullet or wire for a few seconds, while the solder cools and solidifies. Then inspect the results. You should see that the surface of the solder is shiny rather than dull (ignoring the patches of dark rosin), and that both the wire and the tip of the bullet were wetted by the solder.

It is a skill to be learned; but if I can learn it, anyone can
grin.gif
 
LexTR3 said:
Kevin and Randall,

I used my brand new Weller soldering gun and an older wand type Weller to try to heat the bullet heads, but no luck at all with either. The soldering irons hardly warmed the bullet, much less made them hot enough to melt solder. So I spoke with a technical guy at British Wiring and he said that I had to use the butane torch; that a soldering iron won't heat the bullet enough to melt the solder.

Well, since some of you are having luck with the soldering irons, I'll try the Weller again.

I was also told that if I try to melt the solder itself into the hole, rather than heating the bullet and having it melt the solder, that the connection will not be good (?) And, the British Wiring guy said that if I am going to crimp and solder, that I must crimp first (no soldering at all before crimping) and then solder down the hole in the front of the buller. Otherwise, he said, the crimp will damage the soldered connection. (?) Well.... as I've said before, opinions and experiences vary widely with these cars.

Scott: evidently you never heard the old tale: How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: two. Reason: It takes one to change the bulb and another to sing the praises of the old bulb.
Click to expand...

Ed, make sure that the two nuts that attach the tip to your soldering gun are tight. If not sure, loosen them and re-tighten. Also, try a little soldering flux on the tip and the bullet
 
Ah, ha! that may have been my problem. I didn't tin the tip of the gun! A dumb mistake. I will try it again and this time it probably will work.

Many thanks.
 
So, I wired my Bugeye, and didn't worry about sticking the wire through the small hole in the bullet connector. I too bought my parts from British Wire. I use a small parts vise with a small pointed tool clamped upright. The bullet connector small hole end is positioned on top of the pointed tool. The sharp tool just barely goes into the small hole. A well tinned soldering iron is held on the outside of the bullet. Once the bullet gets up to temperature, I fill the inside of the bullet with solder. I then insert the tinned wire. Pull the iron away, add a little cool air from the mouth, pull the bullet off the pointed tool. After a half dozen or so, I sharpen up the pointed tool. I found if you try to clamp the bullet in the vise, too much heat is wicked away, and the solder does not flow well. The pointed tool also allows the bullet to fill up with solder, and not just run out the hole.
Scott in CA
 
Scott,

From what you have written, I understand that you filled a solder type bullet with solder and then inserted a tinned wire into the bullet. That is what I have seen on several YouTube instructional videos, and it appears that it is the best way to attach the solder type bullet. I like your use of the pointed tool to hold the bullet upright. Another way is to drill a small hole in a piece of wood and insert the bullet upside down so that it goes in halfway. This approach holds the bullet, keeps the solder from running out the hole, and doesn't wick away the heat.

But in my case, I first insert the wire and crimp the bullet. So the solder must enter from the small hole at the tip of the bullet. Heating up the bullet so that the solder will melt when inserted into the little hole has been my problem. Apparently, I made the mistake of not tinning the soldering iron before inserting it into the little hole at the tip of the bullet, so there wasn't proper heat transfer.

When possible, I like to crimp and solder. But when I am working in tight spaces in the car, I have to resort only to crimping.

BTW. Great Bugeye you have. I bought a 1960 Bugeye in 1960 and enjoyed it, but it wasn't quite right for long trips, so I traded it for a 58TR3 in 1962. Wish I still had the Bugeye along with the TR3 I now have.
 
Although my horns are working properly now, there is a mystery I hope someone can clear up for me.

As you can see from the photo of the LH horn, there is a brown wire with black tracer connected directly to the red wire going into the horn. This is the way it was connected with the old horn. But this seems wrong to me because I though that brown with black tracer was not a "hot" wire.

Below that, there is a brown wire with green tracer connected to the black wire going into the horn. I thought that the brown wire with green tracer indicated a "hot" wire, so it logically would be connected to the red wire going into the horn and not to the black one.

As I said, I wired the new horns exactly the way the old ones were wired. And the new horns are working perfectly, despite this mystery.

The right hand horn is very straight forward: the red wire is connected ot the brown with green tracer, and the black wire is connected to the brown with black tracer.

Earlier, Dave and George said that these windtone horns are not polarity sensitive, so they would work either way. Is this what is happening here? Seeing that the horns are working perfectly, is there any reason to switch the wires?
 

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LexTR3 said:
Earlier, Dave and George said that these windtone horns are not polarity sensitive, so they would work either way. Is this what is happening here? Seeing that the horns are working perfectly, is there any reason to switch the wires?
Click to expand...

Yes.

No.
 
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