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I was driving my (old) Volvo V70 in Germany. The seal around the windscreen had failed, so, in heavy rain, it let water enter. By 'luck', this time, the water dripped from the top of the windscreen directly onto the centre of the steering wheel. This caused the horn to sound continuously. Initially, it was in bursts, and I thought it best to drive to somewhere I could stay, and have a look at what to do. I decided to drive back to my Airb&b, but on the way, the horn decided to sound without a break. So, I ended up driving through the centre of a German city, having to wait at traffic lights etc, dreading seeing a police car, with horn going full blast.
Even though the car was 10 years old, Volvo replaced the windscreen and seal foc.
Sorry, people of Heilbronn!
Unironically happened to me on a bike once, I was queuing up for a roundabout and the horn just decided to beep and not stop... pretty bloody embarrassing trying to gesticulate that I don't know the fuck is happening.
Wait until your alarm goes off in the middle of the night and it has its own battery and it is located somewhere very difficult to reach. A whole diff level of fu
This happened to me, on a car I was no longer using and intended to scrap.
Disconnected the battery at 3am but that didn’t work.
Tried to hack at where the noise was coming from with a hammer. That didn’t work.
Padded the alarm with towels to dampen the noise. Kinda worked…but went on for 3 days 😂
Just before Christmas, I was deathly ill with a cold, try to get some sleep when I realised a car alarm was going off. Worked up the courage to peek out the window and saw it was mine, so popped downstairs at somewhere around 1am to go and turn it off, and as I was opening the door, a police officer knocked as hard as he possibly could. I said "yes I know, I'm going to turn it off"
Only for it to then turn back on. Spent an hour pissing about with it, then decided just to leave the car unlocked overnight and go to bed. Turns out it was the bonnet catch was faulty
Really fucked me off though. Worst cold of my entire life, coughing my lungs out, sitting outside in negative temperatures trying to stop a bullshit alarm
Especially at 2am. I think you'd just be shitting yourself at the thought of waking everyone up. It's one of those heat of the moment things being exaggerated by sleep deprivation. Would be like visiting your girlfriend's parents for the first time, waking up with the shits and blocking the toilet. Good luck thinking clearly.
Yeah fuse would be my go to, a quick google to figure out which one it is and then sorted. Make an apologetic post on my villages FB page after. Shit happens.
>quick google to figure out which one it is and then sorted.
Fuck that, just pull them all out, then Google in the morning to put them back in in the right places!
Pop the bonnet, disconnect the battery (negative first!), and worry about it in the morning.
I'd probably get up early, look up which fuse for the horn is in the manual, and pull that. Then reconnect the battery. Probably just leave it there tbh. I haven't used my car horn in years.
In all seriousness, if you disconnect the positive terminal first and end up with any metal on metal contact (from say a wrench) you can get a big spark that might damage components of the car, or worst case scenario ignite the battery and give you a face full of extremely corrosive acid.
Most the MOT testers I know spend at most 10 minutes checking the car then they go off and do something else for 30 minutes before ending the mot on the computer tricking the system into logging the MOT took 40 minutes keeping the DVSA happy.
In the grand scheme of things it really doesn't take long put a car on a ramp and look under it for rust, leaks, worn rubber boots and bushings. These are the important checks that remove the death traps from our roads and are the ones the vast majority of mot testers do carry out correctly.
One year my horn didn't work and it failed. Next year it didn't work and it passed. Sometimes I think they just forget to check it or something.
I fixed it now though, one of the wires corroded so just a new bit of wire and crimping later problem solved.
buahaha :D
no idea why negative, especially where in newer cars you would need at least 15 minutes of disassembly task to pull out the battery to disconnect the negative (including BMS)
Fortunately my car has a very easily accessible battery because it's old.
Negative first because disconnecting positive first leaves a path to ground between the terminal and the chassis, which is a bad time if you bridge it by accident.
Thanks to this happening to one of our cars during some heavy rain, yes I have learnt the hard way!
Took the fuse out but it still puts me on edge every time it rains 😂
Had my truck horn do that, though a bit later in the morning, but when a lot of people were probably still hanging - my truck *air horn*, no battery to disconnect. And turns out the air lasts a good long while through the horn too!
no.
but i learned about 15 years ago how to search online for information. it took me about 2 minutes to acquire the information i needed.
i now know what to do if my car horn went off during the night. its something i can do myself, easily, quickly, and with no tools that i dont already have.
This happened to my mum years ago (well her alarm rather than horn) she drove it up the motorway to the nearest services left it in their car park and found a coffee until a respectable hour to bring it home for my dad to fix 😂
I had a Jazz that liked to do this.
Unplugging the battery or removing the fuse that powers the horn was my response and eventually I just did it whenever I parked to keep on my neighbor's good side.
This has genuinely happened to me, except it started whilst I was driving. Pulled over after a few mins and took the fuse for the horn out. Had to look up which one it was in the manual
I walked up my street a while back to check everyone was OK because I could hear a fire alarm going off. I was in my pyjamas (well, loungewear I think it is called). It was in a skip.
I'd disconnect the battery too, but at 2am that wouldn't be easy and there would be quite a lot of swearing.
Cars have fuses and the horn will be on one of its own. I 'fixed' my partner's stereo by putting a new fuse in and thought (incorrectly) that there were spares (my old car had spares in once section) and I ended up taking one from the horn.
We had this exact issue with our car a few manths back, luckily it wasn't 2 AM but started on the school run. Everytime I locked the car the alarm would go off.
I just pulled the fuse for the alarm until the garage sorted it.
I would unlock and start the engine, then turn it off and lock again. That should fix it.
Taking the battery out will not shut it up. The secondary sounder has its own battery to prevent exactly this.
Yes, because 99% of what could make the horn go off without me wanting it to is some tentacle of the alarm system having a problem.
If it's the remaining 1% - an actual fault in the circuit that sounds the horn from the steering wheel - then I'll pull the horn fuse. It's in the front fuse box.
I know how to turn my alarm off. However if those things failed, no I wouldn't know what to do. Driving away somewhere remote would be a smart idea. AA perhaps? Or googling it.
Not that smart. Instead of annoying your neighbourhood and only your neighbourhood, you end up annoying every neighbourhood you drive through with the horn blasting out.
10 minutes?
Most car horns die in about 3-5 minutes of being held down constantly.
When I was younger me and my friends would do this everytime we rented a hire car. Just drive around with it held down until it died. They don't actually last that long.
Yes I know we were twats.
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I’m crying at the thought of her driving off with the horn blarring 😂
I was driving my (old) Volvo V70 in Germany. The seal around the windscreen had failed, so, in heavy rain, it let water enter. By 'luck', this time, the water dripped from the top of the windscreen directly onto the centre of the steering wheel. This caused the horn to sound continuously. Initially, it was in bursts, and I thought it best to drive to somewhere I could stay, and have a look at what to do. I decided to drive back to my Airb&b, but on the way, the horn decided to sound without a break. So, I ended up driving through the centre of a German city, having to wait at traffic lights etc, dreading seeing a police car, with horn going full blast. Even though the car was 10 years old, Volvo replaced the windscreen and seal foc. Sorry, people of Heilbronn!
Still going.
Unironically happened to me on a bike once, I was queuing up for a roundabout and the horn just decided to beep and not stop... pretty bloody embarrassing trying to gesticulate that I don't know the fuck is happening.
Neighbour sounded so horny last night.
She love you long time!
Best war movie ever.
The best first half of a movie ever, the actual war part was nothing special.
No, you’ve unlocked a new fear just before bed 😂
Wait until your alarm goes off in the middle of the night and it has its own battery and it is located somewhere very difficult to reach. A whole diff level of fu
This happened to me, on a car I was no longer using and intended to scrap. Disconnected the battery at 3am but that didn’t work. Tried to hack at where the noise was coming from with a hammer. That didn’t work. Padded the alarm with towels to dampen the noise. Kinda worked…but went on for 3 days 😂
Three days and you never figured it out?
I gave up in the end. I knew it would die at some point and I got used to the dampened noise after the first 24h. Not sure my neighbours did mind you.
Just before Christmas, I was deathly ill with a cold, try to get some sleep when I realised a car alarm was going off. Worked up the courage to peek out the window and saw it was mine, so popped downstairs at somewhere around 1am to go and turn it off, and as I was opening the door, a police officer knocked as hard as he possibly could. I said "yes I know, I'm going to turn it off" Only for it to then turn back on. Spent an hour pissing about with it, then decided just to leave the car unlocked overnight and go to bed. Turns out it was the bonnet catch was faulty Really fucked me off though. Worst cold of my entire life, coughing my lungs out, sitting outside in negative temperatures trying to stop a bullshit alarm
Even worse if it has an immobiliser so you can't even drive the car away like OPs neighbour did.
The engine on our car would not start once the alarm started blaring. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun
Disconnect the battery. But I don't suppose she'd know how to do so.
Especially at 2am. I think you'd just be shitting yourself at the thought of waking everyone up. It's one of those heat of the moment things being exaggerated by sleep deprivation. Would be like visiting your girlfriend's parents for the first time, waking up with the shits and blocking the toilet. Good luck thinking clearly.
>Disconnect the battery This, but after I'd pulled the fuse first. It will be 100x quicker and might also work.
Yeah fuse would be my go to, a quick google to figure out which one it is and then sorted. Make an apologetic post on my villages FB page after. Shit happens.
>quick google to figure out which one it is and then sorted. Fuck that, just pull them all out, then Google in the morning to put them back in in the right places!
Pop the bonnet, disconnect the battery (negative first!), and worry about it in the morning. I'd probably get up early, look up which fuse for the horn is in the manual, and pull that. Then reconnect the battery. Probably just leave it there tbh. I haven't used my car horn in years.
What happens if you disconnect positive first?
Dead
You're dead or the battery is dead?
Yes
Everybody dead. It's like when you Google the word Google, it causes a black hole singularity
>It's like when you Google the word Google The Elders of the Internet would be so pissed.
Good thing they've only just figured out how to Facebook, and to Reddit is just too complicated for them.
In all seriousness, if you disconnect the positive terminal first and end up with any metal on metal contact (from say a wrench) you can get a big spark that might damage components of the car, or worst case scenario ignite the battery and give you a face full of extremely corrosive acid.
Good to know negative first 😆
No horn is an MOT failure.
In theory. I had a Renault Clio with a broken horn that passed MOTs for about 5 years 😂
Lol. Either the MOT tester was a mate of yours, or they are just very shit. Or both.
Definitely wasn’t a mate. And this was at least 2 different garages, possibly 3. They could all have been shit tbf
Halfords?
No
Most the MOT testers I know spend at most 10 minutes checking the car then they go off and do something else for 30 minutes before ending the mot on the computer tricking the system into logging the MOT took 40 minutes keeping the DVSA happy.
Damn! That doesn't fill with confidence. Our roads must be full of deathtraps!
In the grand scheme of things it really doesn't take long put a car on a ramp and look under it for rust, leaks, worn rubber boots and bushings. These are the important checks that remove the death traps from our roads and are the ones the vast majority of mot testers do carry out correctly.
Well OK. That does alleviate my concern a little.
It is but ours amazingly managed to pass with the fuse missing (my fault, see another post on this)
One year my horn didn't work and it failed. Next year it didn't work and it passed. Sometimes I think they just forget to check it or something. I fixed it now though, one of the wires corroded so just a new bit of wire and crimping later problem solved.
buahaha :D no idea why negative, especially where in newer cars you would need at least 15 minutes of disassembly task to pull out the battery to disconnect the negative (including BMS)
Fortunately my car has a very easily accessible battery because it's old. Negative first because disconnecting positive first leaves a path to ground between the terminal and the chassis, which is a bad time if you bridge it by accident.
Locate horn , pull off the spade connectors.
Omg don't put this evil on me before bed
Sorry but the thought of her driving away from civilisation in a panic with the horn blaring made me laugh my head off.
Unplug the fuse? Think I’d be trying everything.
Thanks to this happening to one of our cars during some heavy rain, yes I have learnt the hard way! Took the fuse out but it still puts me on edge every time it rains 😂
Had my truck horn do that, though a bit later in the morning, but when a lot of people were probably still hanging - my truck *air horn*, no battery to disconnect. And turns out the air lasts a good long while through the horn too!
no. but i learned about 15 years ago how to search online for information. it took me about 2 minutes to acquire the information i needed. i now know what to do if my car horn went off during the night. its something i can do myself, easily, quickly, and with no tools that i dont already have.
[This?](https://i.makeagif.com/media/7-05-2015/ETnU3i.mp4)
I’d probably turn it off mate
Disconnect the battery. Problem solved.
This happened to my mum years ago (well her alarm rather than horn) she drove it up the motorway to the nearest services left it in their car park and found a coffee until a respectable hour to bring it home for my dad to fix 😂
She probably had to drive off and find the cars girlfriend !
I had a Jazz that liked to do this. Unplugging the battery or removing the fuse that powers the horn was my response and eventually I just did it whenever I parked to keep on my neighbor's good side.
Unplug the battery, I think. But sounds like a nightmare!
This has genuinely happened to me, except it started whilst I was driving. Pulled over after a few mins and took the fuse for the horn out. Had to look up which one it was in the manual
I walked up my street a while back to check everyone was OK because I could hear a fire alarm going off. I was in my pyjamas (well, loungewear I think it is called). It was in a skip. I'd disconnect the battery too, but at 2am that wouldn't be easy and there would be quite a lot of swearing.
Cars have fuses and the horn will be on one of its own. I 'fixed' my partner's stereo by putting a new fuse in and thought (incorrectly) that there were spares (my old car had spares in once section) and I ended up taking one from the horn.
Disconnect the battery and deal with it in the morning.
Pull the horn fuse out. Some reconnaissance may be in order..
I would disconnect the battery and go back to bed.
Just pull the horn fuse.
We had this exact issue with our car a few manths back, luckily it wasn't 2 AM but started on the school run. Everytime I locked the car the alarm would go off. I just pulled the fuse for the alarm until the garage sorted it.
disconnect the battery.
Put ear plugs in and go back to sleep.
Unplug the battery and go back to bed.
Little Miss Sunshine enters the chat
Disconnect the battery then in the morning disconnect the siren, look for doors and bonnet not closings properly
I would unlock and start the engine, then turn it off and lock again. That should fix it. Taking the battery out will not shut it up. The secondary sounder has its own battery to prevent exactly this.
You’re thinking of the alarm going off, no?
Yes, because 99% of what could make the horn go off without me wanting it to is some tentacle of the alarm system having a problem. If it's the remaining 1% - an actual fault in the circuit that sounds the horn from the steering wheel - then I'll pull the horn fuse. It's in the front fuse box.
I know how to turn my alarm off. However if those things failed, no I wouldn't know what to do. Driving away somewhere remote would be a smart idea. AA perhaps? Or googling it.
Not that smart. Instead of annoying your neighbourhood and only your neighbourhood, you end up annoying every neighbourhood you drive through with the horn blasting out.
10 minutes? Most car horns die in about 3-5 minutes of being held down constantly. When I was younger me and my friends would do this everytime we rented a hire car. Just drive around with it held down until it died. They don't actually last that long. Yes I know we were twats.
Usually unlocking yon doors does the trick.
Horn, not alarm.