LOUD horn installation

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Harald

"Superior Gen 4" Rider
FJR Supporter
Joined
Aug 21, 2007
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Location
Port Angeles, WA
First I'd like to thank Spunkmyer for his idea on where to mount the Stebel Nautilus horn as he described in THIS post. I finally got around to starting my own install a couple weeks ago after buying the horn itself over one year ago! :dribble: I must not be a true farkler in the mold of the FJR-forum if I wait over a year to install a new farkle. :clown2: Hey, life happens and thing get out-prioritized.

From a safety standpoint, I was most concerned with the horn hitting the fender under heavy braking and thereby restricting steering inputs. The other concern was reduced cooling air to the radiator, but I ride on the cold and wet side of Washington state where we don't see high temps in the summer. I'll just have to keep an eye on coolant temps when I venture to warmer climates. And because I ride a lot in the rain, I wanted to make sure the horn could drain easily.

By holding the horn in front of the radiator, I could see that it would be possible to make a bracket that would position the horn close to the radiator and tilted back so that the fender could not hit it and rain could easily drain out of the opening. I next cut a piece of cardboard to get a rough idea of what shape my bracket would need to be (shown on left in picture below). It's real easy to trim with scissors until it looks like it'll work. I then used my cardboard as a template to cut a scrap piece of sheetmetal so that I could actually/sorta mount the horn and get the bends correct. Now that I had proof that this idea would work, I traced my pattern on a piece of 1/8" steel. A little cutting, drilling, filing, bending and painting yielded the final product (on the right in the picture below). :yahoo:

horn_bracket.jpg


Here is a picture of the bracket installed on the Stebel Nautilus horn:

bracket_installed.jpg


I should note that I had to do some fine tuning on the bracket bends before painting it. The positioning is critical so that the horn won't hit anywhere on the radiator while turning the bars lock to lock.

Here's a front view of the horn installed. I haven't hooked up any wiring yet.

installed_frontview.jpg


And finally, here's a side view of the horn installed:

installed_sideview.jpg


A couple notes for anyone else considering this type of install. The two bolts that hold the horn are stock Yami bolts that have a larger diameter shoulder between the head and the threaded section. This requires drilling the holes in the bracket larger than the thread size so that the bracket will sit flush against the plastic splash guard and the bottom of the triple tree. You also have to wiggle the plastic piece around while tightening the bolts so that it gets positioned correctly on the bolt shoulder. I felt that there was still sufficient thread engagement with the horn bracket installed. Because I didn't want a heavy horn flopping around due to loose fasteners, Locktite was used on these bolts.

I didn't document wiring because it's standard fare. I did retain the stock horns, but the Stebel horn is so loud :devilsmiley: that I can't say whether I can still hear the stock ones or not. I just figured that more noise is always better! These horns get 2 thumbs up from me! :thumbsupsmileyanim:

 
Nice job Harald. This will probably be an 'over the winter' project for me when I strip off some plastic. Fortunately I deal with a customer that has a complete sheet metal shop, including a plasma cutter. They have always been very kind to me with my various bike projects over the years - translates, they don't charge me for any of my wild ass projects that they do for me :rolleyes:

 
So you only lost about 25% of your radiator cooling surace ? But gained an awesome horn ? I'd sure like one of them, someday, some way. . .

 
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So you only lost about 25% of your radiator cooling surace ? But gained an awesome horn ? I'd sure like one of them, someday, some way. . .
The picture may make it look like 25%, but it's actually less area thats blocked. And the radiator is not completely blocked in that area because air can still go around the horn. Time will tell if there's any affect on my cooling capacity. Temps have been in the 30's over night and never over 50 during the day, so not exactly ideal condition for testing cooling capactity. ;)

 
I like this option. I've got the horn sitting in the garage waiting for a final decision on best way to mount it.

One thought though, several others have commented that facing the horn forward will eventually mean picking up LOTS of sand and pebbles that bounce up in the "trumpets" and fall down inside. Someone even had a photo of all the gunk that came out when the horn was turned upside down and shaken.

I think I'll see if I can mount the horn facing back with your technique. I'd also thought about fabing a little screen material to cover the trumpets.

Thanks for the write up.

 
I think I'll see if I can mount the horn facing back with your technique. I'd also thought about fabing a little screen material to cover the trumpets.
Facing the horn back would lessen the debris ingestion, but also lessen the sound volume. I don't know how much of a problem debris ingestion will be, but I definitely don't want to mute the horn in any way. That's one of the best things about this mount location: unobstructed ear piercing sound going straight forward! :devil: I remember someone posting that they had their horn mounted by the rear tire on another bike and didn't have any problems, so I wonder if debris ingestion is a big problem?

I was forced to mount the air horns on my truck behind the front license plate and facing sideways. They are not as loud as they were when faced forward during a test blow, but I had no other mounting options besides the frame rail under the truck.

I'm not sure that screen material would help. The crap most likely to go into the horn would probably be sand or dirt, which wouldn't be stopped by a screen unless it was so tightly woven that it also restricted sound. I'm not a acoustical engineer so maybe I'm all wrong, but it's what make sense to me. :wacko:

 
I like this option. I've got the horn sitting in the garage waiting for a final decision on best way to mount it.
One thought though, several others have commented that facing the horn forward will eventually mean picking up LOTS of sand and pebbles that bounce up in the "trumpets" and fall down inside. Someone even had a photo of all the gunk that came out when the horn was turned upside down and shaken.

I think I'll see if I can mount the horn facing back with your technique. I'd also thought about fabing a little screen material to cover the trumpets.

Thanks for the write up.
I mounted mine in the same place but seperated the compressor and mounted just the horn under the triple tree and the compressor in the left fairing, and put 2 Fiamm LOW in the stock horn location, I thought of the same problem with crap going into the horn and I wraped the Steible horn with a nylon stocking this will keep water and dirt from being forced up into the horn but it won't mute the sound, if you have the horn facing back you will blow yourself off the bike.

Marcus

 
I mounted in the same location but seperated the compressor and put it in the left fairing and used fuel line for the air hose to horn, and also put 2 Fiamm LOW in the stock location with relays, I also wraped the Steible with a nylon stocking to keep rocks and water being forced up the horns,if you mount the Steible facing back you will blast yourself off the bike, I had a cager cut in front of me I hit my horns and I can hear them hit the gas thinking a truck was about to run there A## down.FYI after your install DO NOT TEST IN GARAGE..ask me how I know...

Marcus

P.S. Harold you might want to use the part for the intake and run a hose into the fairing so it wont suck up crap when you use the horn.

 
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The installation is still working great. I've had some high energy braking and the horns didn't hit the fender. And we broke the all time heat record here in the Seattle area yesterday with 106 degrees and no heat problems with the bike (I can't say the same for me :dribble: ). Obviously my fans were running yesterday while stuck in traffic, but on the road the temps were normal.

 
I just got home after another brutal commute home. Okay, it much cooler than yesterdays temps..... It was only about 100 degrees on the way home! :dribble:

I watched the temp guage on the way home to report more concrete numbers. Started bike at work and headed for the freeway past a few stop lights. Temps at 4 bars despite stops. Onto freeway at 70mph and temp was at 5 bars for 10 minutes while in car pool lane. Temps got to 6 bars when I slowed to almost stopping exiting the freeway and stayed between 5 or 6 the rest of the way home on back roads except when I had to stop or slow down, at which point it went to 7 bars. Always back to 6 bars once moving again.

So I'd say that my horn placement isn't harming the cooling of the bike. And these are record breaking temps we are experiencing, so definitely not the norm around here.

 
I just did this same exact install. except, I just retained the left stock horn. I pulled off the right stock horn and mounted the relay right there on that bracket and was able to plug the stock horn wires straight onto the relay. Then, ran the wire out of the batt box to the relay then over to the horn. Worked very nicely. I just hope I don't have any ill effects from the placement of the relay.

 
Hey Richouse, Can you post a pic of the relay location please?
Here you go....

This pic shows the relay in the location of the right stock horn. The horn was removed and the relay was bolted to the bracket. I had to do nothing to the stock wires but plug them to the relay.

PhotoJun0444615PM.jpg


This pic shows the new horn installed in the middle the stock left horn on the right side of the pic and if you look closely you can see the relay in the location where the stock left horn would be.

PhotoJun0444716PM.jpg


Hope this helps...

 
I don't predict a long life for the relay. The cases do not seal particularly well and you have exposed copper at the connectors that will not last long in a wet environment. A waterproof relay, shrinkwrap the connectors and a dollop of dielectric grease might help.

 
I don't predict a long life for the relay. The cases do not seal particularly well and you have exposed copper at the connectors that will not last long in a wet environment. A waterproof relay, shrinkwrap the connectors and a dollop of dielectric grease might help.
May be so... Since that relay came with the horn and didn't cost anything extra I'll just use it. If/when it goes out I'll replace it with one better. In the mean time I think I will put a little piece of shrink wrap on that exposed connection with a little of that grease.

Thanks

 
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