The little bits...

Just because my car is off to the body shop doesn't mean there's not a lot to be done. There are still hundreds of little pieces that bolt onto it, and all those things need to be cleaned up, reconditioned where needed, and if they'll take it, spruced up with a little paint.

I decided a good place to start (largely because I keep tripping over them) were the horns.

The Stude has two of them, a high and a low pitched one (marked with the letters H and L) and while they work, the power wire coming out of the horns is a bit brittle. I figured how hard can it be to replace it? Plus they were just a filthy mess--years of travel under the front end of the car had left their toll; that, combined with quite a bit of overspray from previous paintjobs and they definitely needed attention.

So up on the bench. The cover, a sheet metal dome, is held in place by some bent-in tabs around the edge--by carefully prying those up with a screwdriver, I found out what the inside of an old horn looked like.

My inspection found the internal wiring to still be in very good shape--still supple and well connected. So I decided to just replace the power wire.

The power wire is held in place by a combination of a bent over tab and some solder. It took quite a bit of heat to finally be able to pry that tab open--called for a bit of patience.

After it was finally free, I pounded out the dents in the domed cover, brushed off the dirt and surface rust, sanded it down, primed and painted. Then on to the next.

 

Not perfect, but good enough for something you have to crawl under the car to view. On to the next bit.