I Renew My Man Card

Mister, my son, texted me a couple weeks ago that his horn was broken. A seemingly minor thing for a car with over 270,000 miles on it, but it was a safety issue.

I told my son I'd take the car in to get it fixed. But first we should open up the good and look at the engine compartment, I told him.

"Why?" He texted.

It's just something a man has to do, I wrote. We look at engines in case a blinding flash of insight strikes us.

Or in case something is so obviously wrong like a loose wire sticking straight up that it would be embarrassing to find out that was the problem you paid a professional to repair.

On Saturday, I took the opportunity to check out the problem when Mister drove over here. I'd actually forgotten about it after the need to use his car to get his mom and Lamb around when the primary vehicle was down for the count cancelled my planned repair plan.

I'd Googled the issue and found that fuses or grounding wires at the horn can be the problem. A new fuse or connecting a loose wire sounded way cheaper than taking the car in.

So I popped the hood and checked the manual for the fuse box diagram. I found the horn fuse and a related relay. The fuse would not pry out easily even after I removed the relay. Not wanting to break the fuse before I could even examine it to see if it was the problem, I pushed the fuse in if I'd loosened it and replaced the relay.

Then I tested the horn. It worked! Apparently, either the fuse or relay was the problem and it only required pressing them into place.

Apparently.

I suppose it is possible the horn worked all along. I really should have tried the horn before I popped the hood.

But after telling Mister the horn worked and noting that my "fix" may have been just not breaking it, he insisted that he had tried pressing everywhere on the wheel to get the horn to blow and that it really did not work.

Anyway. Bucks saved and my Man Card is good for another year.