1998 Explorer horn not working. Horns checked out. Relay clicks

[Nate_V8]

I have another thread going on electrical gremlins but I wanted some focused fire on this.

My horn worked no problem and then just stopped working for awhile. I tried it at some point and pushed on the horn and held it and after about 5-6s the horn worked and worked like normal, just a little push and it worked fine for about a week or so. Then it stopped working again and hasn't worked since.

I tore apart the center of the steering wheel and everything seems fine, to confirm I popped the hood and pressed the horn and I can here the relay clicking in the fuse box under the hood every time.

Today I removed the battery and battery tray and pulled the horns out and found an extra wire spliced into the main blue power wire for the horns. I hooked the horns up to the battery and both worked perfect.


Here is a pic of the horns and the wire I found, it was just hanging by itself and not attached to anything. I'm assuming it was attached to the horn but for what reason I don't know. The one blue wire powers both horns and it was connected so why the red wire?

 

[Nate_V8]

Do the horns jjust ground to the chassis? Maybe the red wire was on the chassis? It had black tape which I removed when I took the pic.

 

[Nate_V8]

So many replies!

So I cleaned the contacts and installed the horns again. Cut out that red wire and patched it up. Horns still didn't work. I tried swapping the relay as was suggested on here from another and the horns worked! I thought if the relay clicked that it was working. Lesson learned!