Horn disassembly and repair

I never use my horn, aside from when I bump the button while trying to use my turn signals. I was bored, though, so I dug in. 

8mm nut takes off the front. 

 

After that, pry off the crimp ring from the back. I used vise grips, if you're into preserving horns I'd suggest a tiny chisel. 

 

After that you can take off the diaphragm or whatever - I used a razor blade to separate it from the base. InternaIs are fairly simple; allegedly, there's an electromagnetic coil, which pulls the diaphragm down, which makes the set of contacts touch, which releases the diaphragm, repeat and it makes noise. 

My contacts were touching with the tiny adjustment screw bottomed out, so I bent the upper arm to give the assembly some room. 

 

I then fiddled with it for a good half an hour before giving up. The best I got was a pianissimo quack. I suppose it's time to spend $10 on a new horn. 

Thanks for the look inside. Recently I cleaned up the original horn on my 900 project, after spending several hours and getting really nice I realized I didn’t even know if it worked. To my chagrin it didn’t work. I tried several things to adjust the contacts and could never get it to work reliable, nor sound correct when it did work. Seeing the example of yours being rusted and nasty inside that’s probably what mine looks like. I searched through evil Bay and was able to find a really nice condition one and it works great.

The 73 to 75 Z1 horn is held together with nuts & bolts, not the crimp ring. If your looking for one that can be cleaned and maintained it would be a good choice. 

allegedly, there's an electromagnetic coil, which pulls the diaphragm down, which makes the set of contacts touch, which releases the diaphragm, repeat and it makes noise. 

I can confirm it is true, the horn turns on and off sixty times per second making hell of a racket and scaring animals and small children.
 

No need to pry off the horn. It´s adjustable with the screw. The horn mechanism (Wagner hammer) is the same as a classic door bell. Just the frequency is higher.

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f...agnerscherHammer.ogv

 

Adjusted that to no effect; when I opened the horn I found that, even with the nut removed from the fully-threaded-in screw, the contacts were still touching. Had to bend it. 

The same thing happened to the horn on my kz650.  It just made weak noises like a sad animal.  My wife made a lot of jokes about it (she still sometimes mentions it now ~15 years later).  Eventually I decided to show her!  I got a pair of 130db horns, high and low tone.  They looked like the factory horn, but were silver.  I mounted them to a single aluminum plate under the steering head where folks often put oil coolers.  One horn alone sounded like a normal horn, maybe a bit louder.  Nothing special.  But the two horns were close enough in pitch that they beat together.  It was a fast beat.  It didn't really sounds like a horn.  It sounded like a catastrophe.  Problem solved!  I remember coming up behind a guy on a bicycle who was weaving a bit.  I wanted to just give a little toot to let him know I was there and he nearly jumped off his bike.  

I should mention that I had to add a relay to get the horns to work.  The factory switch and wires couldn't handle the higher current.  After I added the horns and the relay I wondered if dirty switch contacts might have been part of my original problem with the factory horn.  Something to check if you're having horn issues.

Almost the same here.  I added a Fiamm horn (including relay) to the stock horn on my 1977 KZ650-C1.  Results below.  Ed

 

My KZ1000 doesn't have a crimp ring. When I pulled it out of the barn, the horn didn't work. Took it apart to find the paint had flaked. Cleaned it up and repainted and it works great now, although still not loud enough to catch the attention of any assholes who blow a stop sign while looking the opposite direction, it would seem...

wrote:

My KZ1000 doesn't have a crimp ring. When I pulled it out of the barn, the horn didn't work. Took it apart to find the paint had flaked. Cleaned it up and repainted and it works great now, although still not loud enough to catch the attention of any assholes who blow a stop sign while looking the opposite direction, it would seem...

Is your bolted together. If so it’s from. 73-75 Z1