I have noticed on my 88 Dakota LE, that the horn doesn't work. I can remove the horn pad & I see two wires. Are these two wires suppose to be plugged into something?
I can post pics tomorrow if I need to.
Thanks!

 

Yep, the horn pad.

Here's the appropriate section from the 1988 Factory Service Manual attached as a PDF.

Edit: At best, my one horn would rather apologetically go "honk". I now have a horn pair from Harbor Freight, and whereas it won't make a train engineer crap his pants, at least people hear me now *grins*

RwP

 

Thanks RalphP! Gonna check this out in a few

 

Yesterday afternoon, I was able to check out my horn situation. I plugged up the two wires into the back of the horn pad & the horn was continually blowing. I unplugged it & swapped the wires around & the same thing happened. I have ordered a horn relay and I am going to replace it with a new one.
I will give up an update as soon as I find time to try out the horn relay

 

Sounds more like the horn button has shorted.

 

Agreed....don't have the schematics in front of me but pretty sure the horn pad provides a ground to the horn relay...the Horn voltage goes through the relay to the horn and other side of horn is grounded to core support. Sooooo....the relay is switching correctly otherwise if it were not you'd either hear the horn all the time or never. The act of connecting the two wires at the horn pad says either the pad switch is shorted or the one side leading to the horn relay is grounded. To test just hook up one wire at a time to the horn pad. If the horn blows it's a ground short at the pad connector. If it takes both wires the pad switch is shorted closed. You can test that with a continuity meter...see if it closes and opens on pressing and releasing the pad.

 

My horn pad was also shorted when I bought the truck - I had to relieve it (bent the tabs just enough to take it apart), figure out how it was supposed to fit, and put it back together.

The previous owner (well, previous to the stepson, who I bought it from!) was a 125 pound lady who apparently stood on the horn, grabbed ahold of the wheel, and kicked it as hard as she could to get around the "Ehhh" sound *grins* Didn't work, BTW; I'd recommend not trying that for anyone else.

RwP

 

Here are some pictures of the horn pad and the relay. While I inserted a new relay into the fuse panel, with the 2 wires unplugged from the horn pad, the horn started to blow when I pushed the new relay into the fuse panel. With the 2 wires unplugged from the pad, I pushed the old relay in the fuse pane, nothing happend. Any idea what the problem could be?! Thanks!

 

Assuming you put the same style relay in, then if the horn blew as soon as you pushed the relay into the socket, then you have a short on the ground wire from the steering column to the relay socket, or a short at the socket itself.

 

I would need to replace that ground wire, correct? If that is the problem.