This is an electrical or electronic related safety issue with the horn.
When horn works, the sound is noticeably delayed after you slam your hand on the center of the wheel. Seems like about a quarter of a second. That delay could make the difference between colliding or not. The airbag/button has a very stiff spring and has to travel far to reach the contact, so a lot of effort is needed, which can make the delay even worse. But there's also some electrical or electronic issue, because even when you violently slam and hold it, there's still a noticeable delay -- far more so than on any other car I've ever driven.
Usually when attempting to just "toot" the horn rather than a full-out angry blow, nothing happens. Even when you punch it hard, you hear it hit the contact but there is no horn sound at all. Contrast that with older cars where there was a direct connection between the horn button and the horn itself -- on those, it would toot. On this car where everything seems to be fed through the computer, it seems to decide that the button hit didn't meet GM's specifications for a proper button press, so the computer never passes it on to the horn.
The worst thing about the horn is the element of surprise -- drivers new to this car could easily get into an accident before they re-train themselves to always use high force and always hold the horn rather than attenpting to just "toot" it. The first time I noticed this, someone was backing up into me in a parking lot. I punched the horn hard a few times and nothing at all happened. Happened again on the highway, nearly hit.
If you do re-train yourself, you could lose some friends or worse, i.e. if you blast the horn at someone dangerous on the wrong day when you were just trying to make sure they knew you were there. So what you end up doing is not blowing the horn many times when you really should have. Or, you waste time in an emergency trying to finesse that difficult button, and have a 50/50 chance of a short blow or no sound.
The computer or whatever electornics it goes through should make sure the horn sounds for at least a short toot whenever there's any contact at all with the horn button. Certainly it should never filter out button hits.
GM, a car needs a responsive horn. Now I'm going to have to run a wire through the firewall to connect the horn button directly to the horn relay, bypassing the computer or whatever sluggish electronics you used.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
This is an electrical or electronic related safety issue with the horn.
When horn works, the sound is noticeably delayed after you slam your hand on the center of the wheel. Seems like about a quarter of a second. That delay could make the difference between colliding or not. The airbag/button has a very stiff spring and has to travel far to reach the contact, so a lot of effort is needed, which can make the delay even worse. But there's also some electrical or electronic issue, because even when you violently slam and hold it, there's still a noticeable delay -- far more so than on any other car I've ever driven.
Usually when attempting to just "toot" the horn rather than a full-out angry blow, nothing happens. Even when you punch it hard, you hear it hit the contact but there is no horn sound at all. Contrast that with older cars where there was a direct connection between the horn button and the horn itself -- on those, it would toot. On this car where everything seems to be fed through the computer, it seems to decide that the button hit didn't meet GM's specifications for a proper button press, so the computer never passes it on to the horn.
The worst thing about the horn is the element of surprise -- drivers new to this car could easily get into an accident before they re-train themselves to always use high force and always hold the horn rather than attenpting to just "toot" it. The first time I noticed this, someone was backing up into me in a parking lot. I punched the horn hard a few times and nothing at all happened. Happened again on the highway, nearly hit.
If you do re-train yourself, you could lose some friends or worse, i.e. if you blast the horn at someone dangerous on the wrong day when you were just trying to make sure they knew you were there. So what you end up doing is not blowing the horn many times when you really should have. Or, you waste time in an emergency trying to finesse that difficult button, and have a 50/50 chance of a short blow or no sound.
The computer or whatever electornics it goes through should make sure the horn sounds for at least a short toot whenever there's any contact at all with the horn button. Certainly it should never filter out button hits.
GM, a car needs a responsive horn. Now I'm going to have to run a wire through the firewall to connect the horn button directly to the horn relay, bypassing the computer or whatever sluggish electronics you used.
- maliboo, Charleston, SC, US