Odyssey 2006 Horn Keeps Failing, stumping mechanics

I have a 2006 Odyssey with 86,000 miles. Almost every day the horn completely freezes for five seconds or so, occasionally under fast-moving traffic conditions (and often several times a day). The problem is that the condition is erratic and only acts up when the car is on the road for a while. Because of these preconditions, the dealership has been unable to diagnose or fix the problem, though I admit they did make a fair amount of effort to do so.

Over the course of this year, I believe I have brought the car in four times to the dealership with this complaint, only to be told that they can’t find the problem. Last week, in desperation, I took the car to an independent mechanic, who told me he doesn’t have the proper equipment to diagnose the problem and that I needed to bring it to a Honda dealership!

I really feel my car is unsafe as is but don’t know what to do now. Any ideas?

When you say the horn freezes, do you mean it’s ON for the entire 5 seconds ? ( that’s what I’m reading. )
Since it only happens when you’re driving, I’d be searching the steering column/wheel area. Something that gets moved during the act.
– Clock spring, the spinning contact between the wheel and the column.
– The wires and plugs that go there.
– horn switch, inside the wheel under or inside the horn pad where you’d push for the horn.

but haven’t your mechanics aleady assumed these ?

You can go wild with test lights and multimeters but I’d start with the most likely, cheapest and easiest replaced part: the horn relay. Maybe that thing is sticky. They do go.
It usually somewhere in the fuse box so easily replaced without using any tools.

You can do that yourself. If it fixes it, great. If that ends up not being the problem, you can tell whomever does end up fixing it that the horn relay is good. He’d most likely change it out anyway, it being an intermittent issue.

First, try RemcoW’s solution of replacing the relay. If that doesn’t solve the problem, I would be tempted to get a horn button that mounts on the side of the steering column, run the wires to a horn relay and bypass the wiring and horn button in the steering wheel. It won’t look like the original equipment, but it can be done neatly. I have done this with older vehicles before we had to worry about clock springs and air bags. The air bags and clocksprings make things even more complicated. A good mechanic can do this operation and disconnect the wiring in the steering column that goes to the horn.

Are you blowing the horn when it sticks on or does it activate itself? If you are blowing the horn and it freezes on, then there is something in the spring mechanism that is sticking. If it is activating itself and sticking on for 5 seconds, then we will need more information about the exact circumstances when it happens.

I assume you are saying that the horn is going off by itself and if so the chances are the trouble is due to a problem in the steering wheel. Most horn circuits are designed to activate the horn by making a connection to ground with the horn switch built into the steering wheel. It could be the trouble is related to temperature. If you don’t want the trouble to happen you could remove the horn relay to disable it. Any good shop should be able to fix this pretty simple problem. I can’t believe you are having difficulty getting this trouble fixed.

I agree. That’s too simple of a system to have a decent mechanic stumped.