The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Horn Capacitor and adjustment?

I've got this over in electrical but taint heard a toot from anyone, thought I'd try it here.
I've got a ’50, 3604 that has one of those old style horns. Since I had it off to clean behind it and straighten the bracket, I figured I’d go ahead and pull it apart and do the rebuild on it also. Two problems surfaced as soon as I took the cover off.
1.There is a capacitor across the points just as there is in the distributor, to keep the points from arcing. Capacitors have a fairly short shelf life, inexpensive paper caps are the worst. So, I’m sure that the cap is bad. This is a really inexpensive cap cheaply made without an outer shell. Problem? What is the value? To big it burns one side of the points, to small it buns the other.
2.The second thing that I noticed is that when the armature is against the pole it should be opening the points, but it taint! Has anyone ever seen a gap setting for the horn points??
While I’m waiting for that answer, that I know will come, I’ll blast and paint the shell.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Just how much ya plannin' to use that horn? Capacitors don't cost a lot, so why not buy a few, observe the arching with one then another, and adjust from there.

I read your post on electrical hoping to get some info on my "horn" posting. It looks like I need to take mine apart as well so it may be on my bench tmro AM. My restoration reference guy just told me to get a voltage reducer. There may be more to the issue. I'll let you know if I discover anything that could help you.

Denny,

Here is a previous post stating the value of the capacitor as .56 mfd. This is good because I have not done this yet.

http://www.stovebolt.com/bboard/cgi-bin//ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=002168#000000

Fred