Hello. I have a 2001 Escape, 3.0 w/automatic. The car is in fantastic shape with only 70k, garage kept miles. I enjoy driving much more than I do my 2018 Escape

Anyway, this morning I heard this weird sound that would come and go every several minutes. It was the horn but not like you were pressing the horn firmly, with a steady sound. No, this sounded like an injured moose or something: loud then faint and kind of like a sort of a clicking sound mixed in.

It stopped doing it on its own a couple of hours ago. The fuses are fine. The horn works perfectly when I press it. The battery is fine, car fires up instantly as usual. She has never done this before.

So...this would have to be the horn relay? What else could this be??

Thank you.

 

Were you expecting the horn to be blowing when this injured moose noise occured?

 

Hello. No, not at all. Car was parked and locked, had not driven it in a couple of days. The noise started out of the blue while I was eating breakfast.

 

I would guess the alarm went off for some reason causing horn to blow. If the horn sounds correct when you actually push on the steering wheel I would let the vehicle sit and see if the fault occurs again.
If you want you could disconnect the BCM connector, horn connector, replace fuses and relays and maybe one of those will do it, but its gonna be hard to do diag unless you can figure out what needs to happen for the fault to occur on demand.

 

Since you didn't state if you live where the sun beats down on the horn pad, there were some problems with the horn pad making intermittent contact and the horn would sound.

. Don't know if this is the problem here, but a test light connected could provide a visual indication if placed in different parts of the circuit.

If corrosion got into the under hood fuse panel , it could partially activate the horn relay.

 

Hello. Thank you for the reply. I should have been more detailed earlier. When she first acted up I did not know what the sound was and since it soon ceased I lost interest. Then about 20 minutes later she started doing it again, a bit louder than before, at times.
At that point I started her up. The sound stoped but only for several seconds. So, I popped the hood and...the sound stopped. No more activity until about an hour later it made the sounds a few times. Since then nothing. I just pulled the fuse in case it goes off again early tomorrow morning (only relevant if the low temperature for the day matters).

edit: I meant to add that the alarm works perfectly, just checked.

 

Very interesting, thanks. But the car was not only facing away from the sun but alsoin my garage . As far as corrosion goes, this car is in almost showroom condition, no issues at all from what
i have found.

 

Thats pretty weird, especially since the horn wasn't blowing at full force when it was going off. I suppose the horn switch could be bad and acting like its being lightly touched thus not blowing at full force.
How good are you at electrical diag and trim removal?

 

Alas, not very good. But a friend of mine is so I would appreciate any ideas on what to test. Thanks.

 

There is one thing you might consider,

IF,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,we are sure the noise is coming from the horn , Just unplug the wire from the horn(s) and see if you still have the noise.



But don't forget to plug the wire back on if you decide to drive the vehicle anywhere.