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Blasty
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Joined: Wed May 10, 2006 11:48 pm
Location: The Beaver State... heh.
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Re: Found a neat horn today! [Update: Video Added]

Sat Jun 18, 2016 3:23 am

Sorry to bump an ancient thread, but for anyone who wants their Federal 55 to HOOOOONK and not Bzzzzzz, I have finally figured this out. I hope someone else can find it useful!

Six years later...

I pulled this sad piece of junk off the shelf in my garage (oh yeah, I have a garage again so I can play with these things), and decided to replace the capacitor inside just for laughs. I'd already tried everything else, so why not. I thought its only purpose was as a transient suppressor of sorts to extend the life of the switching contacts... How wrong I was.

The original cap is .25µF, 1000V. I don't have one on hand, so I grabbed a .33uF 275V cap rated for across-the-line service. After soldering it in temporarily, I braced myself and ever-so-lightly touched the plug to the outlet contacts.

:O :O :O OH! So THAT'S what it's supposed to do! I gave it just a short blast in the garage, and it was just a little bit loud. ;) I guess the cap was bad.

Now off to Surplus Gizmos tomorrow to locate a capacitor with a higher voltage rating. 275V might be fine, but I expect some nasty spikes from the inductive reactance of the coil, so I'd feel better if there was a greater safety margin.

So yeah, this case is closed.
Beware those who teach not how to think, but what to think.

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