Foot Switch stories

[Don Bradner]

On 3/13/2007 at 7:34 PM Leroy Eckert wrote:

>That foot air horn switch! Me to and it always happens at 7am

How many here have foot switch stories? Here's mine...

When we picked up Blue Thunder in Phoenix in January we spent awhile cruising
around without our toad to get a feel for steering, brakes, turning radius, and
so on.

Returned to the consigning dealer and hooked up the toad to depart. Got to the
first stop sign, where there was quite a bit of cross-traffic so I took that
moment to adjust the steering wheel. The air horn started to blare and wouldn't
quit. Great! A short in the steering column. Then it stopped. I made a left
turn, then into a left turn lane where I stopped behind traffic and the horn
started again. People getting rather nervous, and I'm watching my air drop. Then
it stopped.

We pulled around the block and back into the dealer's. A mechanic came out and
we tried very hard to get it to sound, no such luck. He called Blue Bird and
came back and said they told him several possible places for panels to look for
the relay (to disconnect it) but it sounded like a major job to track down. So
he said "There should be a dash switch for the horn." A dash switch for the
horn? Sure, he says "There's a dash switch for everything on a Blue Bird."

Sure enough, there was the switch, "Electric/Air" (I think that's right, I'm not
in the coach at the moment) and we turned it to Electric. Beep Beep. We can live
with that.

We leave and proceed without incident to the Flying J where we took $400 in fuel
(it was half-full and the prices hadn't risen yet), then pulled out into
congested traffic on the side street. There goes the horn again, and it's air,
not electric! The woman in front of me was almost frantic, and my wife says in a
lot of cities I probably would have gotten shot. People I've told this to since
then say Phoenix would be a good bet. Air pressure getting dangerously low, and
no place at all to pull off the street.

Then it stopped, and didn't happen again on the trip to Quartzsite.

You can imagine my relief when I was reading the manual that night and got to
the part about the foot switch...


Don Bradner
90 PT40 "Blue Thunder"
Eureka, CA