The following picture is my mother posing in front of my father's 1914 Cadillac.
Note the horn on the car.
I think this horn was used on a number of large cars of the day.
Restoration
At first I tried to activate the horn by applying power. Nothing happened.
I disassembled the horn and found the following items that would need correcting:
1. The nut for one of the power posts was missing. This was a problem as the thread size is 1/4 32.
This is very hard to find. I contacted Bob Webb of Cornell Industries in Orangeburg, New York.
This company is one of the few places that make this size nut in brass.
Bob sent me the 1/4 32 nuts I needed in the return mail. Thank you Bob.
2. The diaphragm (left) was made from a coffee lid with a blob of brazing in the middle of it.
I made a new diaphragm (right) from the bottom of a new pie pan. I soldered a hardened steel ridge to the center
to strike the cam of the motor.
3. I sandblasted the rusty motor and the back of the horn body.
Those parts were primered and then painted glossy black.
The horn body had been chromed plated and then parts of it painted.
I spent a lot of time and paint remover to clean off the paint from the horn.
I painted the center section of the horn because it looks right and that section
would not polish.
4. I cleaned out all of the old grease and cleaned the communitator and brushes.
I re-assembled the horn and adjusted the cam to diaphram distance for the optimum sound.
The following is a picture of the fully restored horn.
Click horn to honk
The sound you heard is from this horn.
I had a problem recording the sound because it was so loud.
It sure makes the horn on my 1924 Dodge Brothers truck sound tame.
Last updated 6/29/2007
