my son had a dead short that burned up his low beam headlight/driving light on the driver’s side. i thought in my infinite wisdom that we should replace all three wires from the connector to the fuse/relay box under the hood, about 4ft and we used heat shrink after soldering so no big deal. well, i tried to pry the fusebox apart to get to the underside of the relay rather than just testing for continuity on the plugs which i ended up doing. replaced all the wires and put the new headlight socket in and now when we connect the battery without the key turned on the horn blows and won’t stop. turn the key on and it stops, even runs, but won’t pass inspection like that.
does it have an anti-tamper alarm on the fusebox? any other ideas on what caused the problem and how to fix it? i could just cut those wires and run the driving light straight to a power that is hot when the car is running, but that doesn’t undo what i’ve done and if it has an anti-tamper alarm it doesn’t solve the problem. i’ve had great luck recently when having issues not grow related here, hopefully it will hold now since the boy, well he is 20 now, has a court date for no inspection sticker tomorrow.
Sounds like the security system is activated from the battery being disconnected. I would have this issue with some of my Jeep’s as well.
Have a key fob? try locking and unlocking the doors after reconnecting the battery.
Is there a security icon lit on dash?
In my experience on Jeeps with security system, and no key fob. You can use the key on a door or hatch to lock and unlock manually to reset the security system as well.
it’s not complicated but it has relays along with fuses for things. four wires on the low beam and three of them are hooked up to the same wire of the two that go to the actual light. oh well, looks like a new fuse box is in order. i need to pull the horn fuse and start tracing them down i guess. i hate electrical issues on a car. like you said, at least it’s an easy, well short anyway, circuit.
U could always just cut the horn from the harness and just wire it in to an additional button switch 🤷 u def got a short somewhere that is giving power to it without key going hot, somehow the circuit is opening when u turn the key though, but if ur able to turn the key and start it then it’s not an activated alarm system cu it would also disable the car
i have a subaru guy that i call and he told me to try turning the key on when i hook up the battery and let him know what it did, but then he left for the weekend and isn’t back yet. said it may be something to do with the alarm and the battery unhooked but i didn’t get a chance to tell him i tried to pry apart the fusebox. that is the only thing i could have screwed up from what i can see. except replacing three wires that had a short in them. got to work today then have time to troubleshoot tonight. i hope cotton gets back today and i can ask him.
I had one do the same thing. I had to replace the horn mechanism in the steering wheel. But it sounds like you got some other problems. lol
Sorry to hear about the horn. I know that can be crazy. Mine started when I was going down the road just started blowing.
I would try pushing the horn a bunch of times and maybe doing a few 360’s with the steering wheel you may get lucky,if that has no effect I would remove the fuse and see if it stops ,if not ,then reinstall it and remove the relay ,look in the fuse box for a similar relay you can swap or maybe you have a short,if it has remote start that may have an issue,even a poor battery on the fob can do some crazy things or it could have an issue itself .good luck
yeah, we thought we had it fixed because the high beam was burned out. no horn, everything good then we replaced the high beam and the horn went off. something we did patched the horn into the light circuit. we just took three wires and replaced them one for one. oh well. he went to court and his buddy who was driving had the ticket and not him. he’s gonna try to get the guard to give him a grant to replace the whole wiring harness.
We are a bit of a Subaru family. Own/owned several. So I’d like to take a stab at this.
I work on semi’s mostly, and absolutely hate electrical work. But might have a small amount of insight.
on the low beam headlight side there are two wires coming off the lamp socket. they go into a connector with three wires. third wire disappears into the wiring harness and we can’t locate what it does. from the first connector to the lamp there was no short. there was on two of the three wires from the first connector to the low beam relay, so we checked the three wires in the connector for continuity and found the other end of them under the fusebox. we cut them one by one and replaced them, soldering them in and using heatshrink. now when the lamps are in their sockets the horn stays on when the battery is hooked up. car starts and runs but when you shut it off, the horn blows until the battery is disconnected. it does not blow when running. if i’m not mistaken it still blows when the horn relay and horn fuse are not in the vehicle but cannot confirm that until later.
Subarus are electrical gremlins. But from the sound of it, there wasn’t a short going from the fuse box to the socket, but rather a failure beyond, you would have to pull up a electric schematics and see what your in loop with and then trace point back from there.
Horn trigger usually goes through the blinker/headlight switch. Which can connect to clock spring, but it’s sounding like it’s the other side, like you’ve created a positive charge pathway, so when the key is turned to accessory or beyond that it triggers the horn. I’d follow the positive leads from the horn back and see if there’s a common connector.
yeah a schematic or wiring diagram would have been nice. it is when the key is on that the horn stops though. when the key is off it honks steadily. since it’s a steady honk and not beeping it’s not the alarm like i thought initially. my thoughts to make it pass was to just wire the lights on the left to the lights on the right and see if that works, then run the horn straight from the horn itself to a button on the dash and bypass everything except a 15a fuse inline in case it overloads. then my son quit working on it so it became a moot point. i would still like to get the sticker so he doesn’t get pulled again. then he can get a new wiring harness whenever.
Looks like headlight and horn share a common path. And from the sounds of it’s, it’s exciting the fuse block when the key is off, which is interesting, but to me sounds like a crossed wire or open positive that isn’t grounded correctly.
