Lady72nRob71

Gotta share some odd experience here...

My ladyfriend's 2005 kia sorento's horn did not work. The relay clicked but no BEEP. It has two horns, one on each side of the grille.
She was in a small wreck last year that cause a bracket to tear into a wiring harness and I had to splice 2 wires for the headlights. Disturbing the wiring on the RH side caused an occasional, intermittant blow. (Just long enough for her to get her inspection sticker!)
So for sure I thought the horn wire was torn, too. I start looking for physical damage but did not find any.

I popped out the relay and jumped the hot and horn contacts with a paperclip. To my amazement I got 12V at the hot wire at each horn. Since most of the vehicle is plastic, the horns have individual ground wires. I measured 0V at each ground wire. Here I was confused. Horns rarely go bad this new, and both on the same vehilcle seemed impossible. Right??

So next was a load test. I replaced the horns with reverse-light bulbs (1157s). They lit up.
So I ohmed each horn - nothing. So both seemed bad!! They were made by "Sung Horn" so I guess they had sung their last note.....

I was ready to go to the parts store to get a generic replacement, but then the light bulb in my head lit up.
A horn is an electro mechanical device. The metal 'diaphragm' moves fast due to the internal magnet coil being switched on and off very rapidly. There is an internal set of contact points that cause the fast switching action. The open and closing point is set by the external current adjusting screw. What had happened was that the screws were turned in a little too much fromt he factory and there was very little pressure on the contact points, causing an open circuit. If the thing cannot start moving, it will remain silent. All I had to do was turn the little screws out about 1/10 of a turn to allow the contacts to close all the way. So now both work fine.

So this is something to keep in mind if your Olds horns fail to sound. Try letting the screws out (or even in) just a tad and see what happens. It may allow just enough extra pressure on the contacts to get it working!

ah64pilot

It's the simple things that drive us crazy. Who would been able to diagnose that but an engineer. Cool Rob

Lady72nRob71

I googled "kia horn problem" and "kia horn does not work" and this seems to be a common problem on all kia cars from the past decade!
Maybe in their search for answers, they will find the easy magic fix here on classicolds!

And yes, I am glad to have been an engineer and fixed this for free in about 5 minutes (after an hour of troubleshooting of course!)
Basically, the current adjustment spec at the factory was off and they had turned in the adjustment screws in just a tad too much!
So far I have never found a domestic horn with a problem, even after 40 years.
Which brings me to the point of kias being disposible. The paint is coming off all four rims, much of the vinyl trim inside is all flaking and deteriorating, some of the lightbulb sockets melted to the bulb, the tranny downshift switch sometimes works, turn signal switch is flakey, headlight plastic is delaminating and scaley like a snake, weatherstrip is coming apart, and much more. This thing is only 7 years old though!