Ruptured air horn reed valve

[RoyBatty]

I noticed that the Spider had lost the nice dual tone sound and that the tone that did play was weak.
Clamped off the air lines one at a time and popped the horn to find out that the longer of the two was not working.

Pulled it out and pulled the trumpet off the assy. to find the brass reed valve was ruptured.
OK I thought, now what?

Carefully pried the rear cover off the aluminum housing using a small straight blade screw driver, CAREFULLY, this is an easy spot to stab your hand.

Once the cover was off I needed to replace the thin brass reed valve. I didn't have any brass, so I took a section from the side of an aluminum soda can and cut it to fit with scissors. Clamped it all together and reinstalled the trumpet.
Tested on the car with the other horn blocked off. You have to adjust the installation depth of the trumpet against the reed valve to get the tone adjusted for the airflow from the compressor.
Recrimped the outer housing and tightened the locknut on the trumpet and reinstalled.
Now the dual tone is back and I got to spend a couple hours in the garage having a little fun.
Had more than one neighbor looking at what was going on.

[seabeelt]

Now that's what I call a tooting good time . Nice write up on the repair. I will be putting that in my Fiat folder.
R/

[azruss]

I added early air horns to my 80. I had a choice of 3 different sets. I did my testing using an air compressor delivering a few psi. I wore ear plugs and still went deaf in the process.

[ClarkTheShark]

Awesome. good to see a repair with a little handy work and intuition rather than spending money a replacement. FIAMM makes an aftermarket kit that I went for to upgrade from the electric horns on my 79.

http://www.amazon.com/FIAMM-66020-Proje ... m+air+horn