I Would Like To Change My Horn, HELP PLEASE!!!

Keith,

FIAMM air horn kit avaiable at many auto parts stores

 

Hi! Yes! You can go to any nice auto boutique or tuning shop and pick up the air horns. They are called FIAM. You can get single, double, triple, or even quadruple horns.^_^ pretty easy to install or if you dont want to hassle, it should be about $50 labor. Pretty simple procedure. What kinda car do u own?

 

Sure, just visit your friendly neighborhood auto parts store
and purchase a FIAMM air horn kit.

 

Most have double, but make sure you don't just tap into the stock wiring to run the horn compressor. Run a relay with some nice fat wiring to the battery, and use the old horn wiring to control the relay for the new horns. A powerful horn compressor running off the weak current used for an electronic horn (what most domestic cars have) doesn't get you the results you want. Relay. It's all about the relay.

 

you can buy a ferrari 355 air horn from ferrari for about $100.

 

Electricity 101: to whit:

The horn has two wires, one is ground, one is switched to 12V when the horn is pressed connecting the circuit. This is about the most simple electrical switched circuit possible.

A) the horn doesn't care about anything other than 12V getting to it, when 12V arrives, the horn makes noise/sound.
B) the operator only cares that the horn goes off when the horn button is not depressed and vice versa.
C) if you can physically mount the horn to the car, and electrically connect the same two wrries the original horn had, it will work.

What could be simpler?

 

I would rather swap mine out with a horn from a Mack Truck - when your on the freeway and a car starts coming into your lane the horn is to whimpy and not loud enough! Maybe if I change to a triple it may improve....Q

 

Au contrair, mon frer. Voltage is only half the equation. Amperage is the amount of juice that you're supplying to the thing. An electronic horn typically runs on a 5 amp circuit with 18 gauge wiring, not a whole lot of juice there. An airhorn compressor runs on 15 or 20amp and requires 10-12 gauge wiring, depending on its size.

Picture a garden hose versus a firehose. Both supply water from the same water supply, but one allows lots more to flow through. Same water, just more of it.

So yes, you could run an airhorn off a 5 amp 12V power supply from an electronic horn, but it's going to either melt the stock wiring as the larger draw from the compressor inducts more power than the wires can handle, or it's going to damage the compressor by putting it under load and overheating it. Either way, you're not going to get the maximum possible volume out of it with that power supply. So you relay it and run larger wiring. Easy to do, problem solved, everybody happy.

btw this is the same reason that you don't want to throw significantly higher wattage bulbs into your foglights without upgrading the wiring or using an overkill wiring harness... melted stock wires are no one's friends.