1996 Wiring Help: Horn, Lights suck on

[MAG58]

Bit of a startle while at work, a coworker alerted me to my 96 just blasting its horn.

Went out to the garage to check, horn was just stuck on as well as tail lights were on as well as the gauge lights. The front indicators were not.

Messed with the airbag, no dice. Activation/deactivation of hazard light did nothing. The turn signals and blinkers were not on. Just the night time driving lights and dash lights.

Pulled the horn fuse, that cleared the horn issue, the relay was HOT. Pulled it as well. Night driving lights were still on (side markers and tail reds). Pulled the tail light fuse and those finally shut off but no manipulation of the switches and stalks seemed to do anything.

Perused through the EWD and didn't see a specific place to start looking other than tracing both feeds from the battery out.

Has anyone experienced this before? Ever had this issue?

Thanks.

 

[LongDuck]

Have you worked on anything under the hood or dash recently? Most times, these are due to shorts in wiring harnesses that require immediate attention. The HOT relay that you removed - do you have any spares you can swap in to see if thats related?

Because this issue seems to affect several separate circuits, I'd start with inspection of the wiring from the Battery to Fusible Links, then to the underside of the engine bay fuse block, specifically looking for wires that look deformed by heat. Sometimes, this looks like the plastic cheating is flattened near the ends where bare wire meets connector pins, as the heat of the high resistance pin melts the plastic, allowing it to flex against the wire.

Apart from that, it's likely to be either there or the under dash fuse block needing to be inspected. Go by fuse location, but be wary of any shorts in the system which run adjacent to other wiring.

The horn going off is a warning - the truck is telling you it needs attention, so don't ignore this one.