Horns & Dead battery

[68FORDJBM]

My truck as eaten through 3 aftermarker horns. They all blow 2-3 times and quit so i gave up and removed the horn but left the wiring. Now, my battery keeps going dead. Could there be a short in the wire coming off the cylinoid? Or is this just an unfortunate coincidence?

The battery is 6 months old and worked fine until I removed the horn (open circuit). I'm going to remove the wire but that just seems too simple. Any other advice for tracing the cause of my dead battery short would be appreciated

[fordman]

unless the horn wire is grounding out. that probably isnt the problem. no reason to cut off the horn wire. you need a horn

to check for a battery draw. yo uhave to turn off everythign. remove the bulb from any underhood lights and probably the doem light too. if you are goignt o have the door open when testign the system. then you remove the negative battery cable. and put either test light or a multimeter between the battery post and the negative cable end. if the light lights up or the meter registers anything then there is a draw on the battery. to find the draw. pull out one fuse at a time until the light goes out. when the light goes out. that circut the fuse controls is where the draw is at. if you think it might be the horn. unplug the horn relay. that will kill power to the horn wire near the core support.

[68FORDJBM]

Thanks Fordman - sounds like a lot of fun:) I hate electricty:)

[68FORDJBM]

I have a .5 amp draw. None of the fuses made it go away but the 3-prong relay bewteen the battery and the cylinoid 'is suspicious. The test light intensity goes up and down when I wiggle the plug to the relay. The light goes out if I unplug it. I think its part 13853 but what is it? It could be the plug too since the plug isn't in good shape. The relay looks fairly new.

[fordman]

its the horn relay. i would say the plug or relay is bad. i tried to make a video tonight on how to test them. but the relay i had was bad too. so i didnt make the video.

[68FORDJBM]

Thanks, so all three wires operate the horn relay. I'm not using the orginan horn right now - the horns are missing from the truck. So I could leave it unplugged and everyting should work fine. I can replace plug, relay and horns when I get around to it.

The thing that is weird or just a coincidence is the earlier fact I mentioned about the aftermarket horns. They weren't using that relay, I had the horns wired to a button on the floor and the whole thing went through a seperate relay.

[fordman]

you can leave it unplugged and everything will be fine until you can fix it.

[68FORDJBM]

Thanks. That's just what I did and will do