>Hello Group - I made some nice progress this weekend toward becoming
>road-worthy, with the horns being a notable exception. Is there any way to
>determine whether the problem is the horns or the relay? Upon pressing horn
>button, I get slight, one-time chirp from the high horn, and nothing from the
>low horn. A direct connection from battery to horn gives the same result (at
>least for the high horn, I didn't test the low that way). What is the
>purpose of the relay? And how do I know if it is faulty?
I just spent part of the weekend replacing my horn relay (the old one
had died, and the DPO had wired a new horn directly to the battery with a
button screwed under the dash). The purpose of the relay is to avoid a bunch
of amps going through the horn button and it's wiring and perhaps burning
them out. You'll note that the wires attached to the relay for the horn are
much beefier than the ones going to the button. My old relay was dead, and
since I didn't feel like paying $20 for the semi-correct current lucas version,
I paid about $8 at Pep Boys for a generic horn relay. A couple of male spade
connectors from my box of electrical connector parts and I was set. To tell
if it's fault, direct-wire the connection to the horn button to ground (after
verifying that 12.xV are getting to the hot side of the relay connection).
Also, check the Bentley manual for the correct connections - the DPO on my car
had hooked them up very wrong. Boy did it feel good to rip out the wire
wandering all over the engine compartment and under the dash the the DPO had
wired directly to the battery terminal. :-)
If the relay is working, it should make a click when you energize it.
Since you get the same result on the high horn with direct connection
as with the normal wiring, it's probably a fault in the horn. I'm not certain
if they can be rebuilt; I've never head of it being done. Exact orginals are
not available if I remember correctly, but equivalents are. You should try the
low horn as well - also check and clean the horn connections; after fixing my
relay I didn't get anything until I took an abrasive stone from my Dremel to
the spade lugs (by hand).
A VOM is indispensible in working on LBC wiring. Now all I need to
do is remove the speedo so I can get to the hazard switch and find out why
it supplies only .3V to the hazard relay/flasher. At least the hazard relay
works when wired to 12V. After fixing that I might actually be able to pass
inspection for the first time since '89! (and stop having to be paranoid
about police cars passing the other way ;-).
>Second, the Haynes manual says that I should have lube fittings on my
>u-joints. Only two of the six (the ones that appear to have been replaced)
>have fittings. Are the rest of my u-joints original 83,000 mile parts?
> Also, one of the u-joints with fitting is at right rear wheel with no access
>for grease gun. How do I grease it?
>Thanks
They were probably all replaced at different times. Normal lifetime
for TR6 ujoints is <50,000 miles, perhaps <30,000. It's possible though
unlikely that some are original.
The outer-rears have a hole in the bottom of the trialing arm for
access. The inners are covered by a rubber boot that should be bendable
out of the way. At worst you can undo the wire holding the boot in place and
then replace it (I advise a new wire or being very careful not to weaken the
old one).
A bit of advise: if any of them seem to be even iffy and you don't
know how old they are, consider replacing them all on general principle. I
wish I had after buying mine. First I did the outers. I was going to do
the inners at the same time, but I really wanted it back on the road. Mistake.
Less than 4,000 miles later, I had to replace the inners. Again silly me,
I figured that they had been the cause of the squeaking under torque I'd been
hearing for a while. Wrong. Now I'm trying to make sure I get through this
summer before having to replace the driveshaft ujoints (I plan to use that
as an excuse to rebuild the trans).
--
Randell Jesup, Scala US R&D
Randell.Jesup@scala.com
Ex-Commodore-Amiga Engineer, class of '94
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