2008 Chrysler Sebring - Horn has its own agenda

Horn blows for no reason and any time

Don’t know if it is a Chrysler motors problem but had the same thing happen on a 2000 dodge stratus it was a bad horn relay.

The TIPM may be starting to fail.

Tester

In addition to a bad TIPM or a bad horn relay, I think that a worn-out clock spring in the steering wheel hub is a possibility.

This car belongs in the Boston area, is it?
:grinning:

Could be a number of things. I’ve seen a failed horn, horn switch, horn relay… It’s embarrassing and hard to isolate.

My '71 Charger had a relay for both the horn and–I think–the door-open chime. One day while I had the doors open for an extended period of time to unload lots of stuff, the relay overheated and it caused the horn to sound–continuously. Luckily, I had the factory repair manual, and I was able to locate the relay and disconnect it.

A couple of days later, I figured out which contacts in that relay were for the door-open chime, and I cut the wire leading to those contacts. No more door-open chime, but at least I was able to get the horn to work properly.

1 Like

Is TIPM similar to BCM(body control module)?

Yes.

Tester

Then they are both the worst thing ever to happen to cars!

TIPM == total integrated power module. It helps to reduce the amount of separate wiring and electrical connectors needed for the car, so it does provide some practical benefits. It seems to be a pretty common Chrysler product complaint here, but hard to say if it is actually a problematic part b/c it is intimately involved with the entire car’s electrical system; so could be a single TIPM failure would have been 3 separate and hard to diagnose failures in a car not TIPM equipped. Not entirely a downside thing.

As far as the horn problem, I’m guessing – presuming you are like most courteous drivers & seldom use the horn otherwise – the problematic part is the horn switch located in the steering wheel area.

This reminds me of an incident on a recent Best of Car Talk podcast. Whenever it rains caller’s windshield washer pump turns on by itself and empties the entire WW tank … lol … the only way to stop it is to pour more fluid into the plastic WW fluid tank. Unsure why that helped. Both Tom and Ray believe the problem is a faulty WW pump relay. Caller says the shop attempted to repair the problem by applying sealant to the electric motor that operates the pump. Ray says incorrect, apply sealant to the relay instead. I’m thinking “seems more likely the switch the driver presses is the problem.”, and the relationship to rain is that in light rain, the driver may be pressing that switch more often.