2003 Mazda B3000

I had a fairly decent fender bender with a tree on private property on the front driver side. Don't want to bother with insurance, but need to fix an issue. The horn doesn't work, and the air bag light comes on intermittently. There is definitely not a pattern to when it blinks. It may be on six to eight seconds out of ten second.

This feels like the clock spring, but I tested continuity on just about every combination of leads from one end to the other and got zero resistance. Should I get just a little resistance, or none at all?

Assuming it's not the clock spring, what else may I be looking at? I tested voltage at the horn while it was being pressed and got nothing. The fuse for the horn is OK.

My gut is saying replace the clock spring anyway, but I've suspected the CS on another vehicle for a different issue, replaced it, and that didn't fix it.

Thanks for any tips and advice.

 

Welcome to the forum

I assume airbag didn't deploy?
There will be two airbag sensors behind from bumper area, one could be damaged.

2003 has Horn control fed thru the GEM module.
Do you have keyless entry?
and did the horn honk or lights flash when activated?

There is also a Horn Relay in engine fuse box.
One slot in relay's socket will have power(12v) all the time, from horn fuse.
This relay is activated by the GEM module either by getting steering wheel button or Keyless entry input/signal

Also did someone install a 3rd party alarm system?
These can fubar horn setups.

Any other buttons on the steering wheel?
Cruise?

Yes, 0 OHMS when testing two ends of the same wire means wire is good, BUT...........
In a clock spring, or any multi-wire harness, you need to test adjacent wire ends for shorts.
i.e. if 1 wire is testing 0 OHMS then move 1 probe to each other wire end to make sure there is no other 0 OHM, which would mean those two wires were shorted

 

Thanks for the reply.

It's a very basic model. No cruise control, no controls on the steering wheel. No keyless entry. No third party security.

Also, no flashing or honking of the horn at the time of the accident. I didn't even realize there was a problem with the horn until later.

Edit: The airbag did not deploy.

I'll try to find the airbag sensors and check the horn relay as well.

 

It actually ended up being the clock spring. I pulled one from salvage today and installed it, and everything is working fine now.

 

Good work

Thanks for updating the thread and the fix