Don't think I've given up, just haven't had much time to do what I wanted. Real life job has been keeping me busy, and planning a family vacation.
Worked on the horn, as it wasn't working and I wanted to hear how bad or good of sound it made. (Also would be a nice safe guard when backing up). Follow through the TM, ended with multiple issues. First, the horn button ("new styled") is just flat out missing the spring, and the cable was just shoved down into the steering column. Manually shorted it out to ground and got a really big puff of dust out of the horn. Then just the sound of air. Took the horn off & apart, then cleaned the diaphragms. There was a bunch of something all built up on the inside. Might have been a bee or wasp nest of some sort, maybe just corrosion. After cleaning it up and putting it back together, I took my compressor and blew some air through it and got a nice little honk out of it. Put it back together, but got nothing when I shorted out the ground from the cab.
Hmmm... climbed up to check and heard a small electrical arc when I touched the horn. That really got my attention. Well, the rubber boots on the solenoid don't just protect the connectors from the weather, they also appear to isolate the connectors from the metal casing of the solenoid itself. In the process of disconnecting the wires, the rubber boot got knocked loose they were so weathered and cracked. So, I need a new horn kit and maybe a new solenoid. Going to look at it the possibility of getting some appropriate sized rubber washers to put on the terminals of the solenoid. As I can carefully put my ohm meter leads on the connectors, and as long as they are not grounded out it registers 15-16 ohms which I believe should be normal. I just can't hook up the actual leads 25 & 26 to the horn as the weight of the lead itself causes the connector to short out. Not done yet, still working on it.
I haven't taken the horn solenoid back off yet, but can any one comment on how big the spring is that pushes the "silver bullet" back after voltage is removed? Like many have found out, it fell out when I took it off. But there was a spring still there, just seemed to be quite small.
The brass?? diaphragm on the left looks much worse in the picture than in real life
The horn solenoid with the rubber boots completely removed.
I took the last two old military batteries out of the battery compartment and properly cabled up the two new group 31 batteries. Winter here in NC is not too severe, and this is not a life or death vehicle for me, so I'll take my chances with the reduced capacity. I have plans to cut/build some wooden blocks and use the existing battery hold downs to keep everything in place. I'll post some pics when that is done.
I also got a set of tow bars from Trailboss, whom just happened to be driving through NC last week. Of course my family pointed out they were the wrong ones, because they were green instead of tan.