i have removed the stock horns and gotten a set of hella air powered horns, when i use the horn now its a very weak tone and im sure its supposto be louder, stock was louder! im wondering if there is less then enough power going to the horns from the stock wires. how much power goes to the horns? any help would be great. thanks.

 

You need to use a relay. The wire for the stock horn would trigger the relay, and you need to run a new wire from the battery to the horn. It DOES require more power than the stock wiring can handle.

 

Be sure to use wire loom for any extra wiring.

 

im a total electronic mod newbie, but i want to do this myself (and do a professional job on it as well) can anyone point me in the direction of a diagram or somewhere i can learn more about what to do. thanks

 

Does this help?

 

You may need to measure the DC resistance of the factory horn. The horn driver may not be able to drive a short to ground. You can buy a resistor from RS that matches the value you measure on the horn. Place that resistor in series with the relay.

Cheers

 

That relay is backwards, the coil should be in series with the horn button, and the contact in series with the hella horn. As it is, that won't do anything but short out the battery when you go to honk your horn. Oh, and your horn would be on at all times (at a reduced voltage since some voltage would be dropped across the coil).

 

The driver isn't connected directly to ground...relay coils have a resistance designed for the voltage range they'll be used in.

 

Some suggestions:

1. Add a relay to control the new horns
2. Use a different power source that can supply enough current (and fuse it)
3. Add a new larger gauge wire (16 or 14 gauge) to go from the relay to the horn

Here's one way to do it. Check out this picture of the under-hood fuse box.

If you do it right you can fit the relay and all the wiring in here, so the only wire you need to run is to the horn itself. Note that I have removed the Horn Relay in this photo. It plugs in where the "Horn Button" socket is marked.

Check out the 1/4" male connector that has battery power all the time, I marked it "+12v". You can use that for your source of battery power, just be sure to put a fuse in line with it. You can use a standard 1/4" female quick-connect terminal to plug into that terminal, and wire it to terminals 86 and 87 on your relay (this is a standard "automotive cube relay").

Now run a wire from the cube relay terminal 85 to the "Horn Button" socket. This takes a 3/16" male quick-connect terminal, which is a little harder to find, but I have seen them at Radio Shack and NAPA. In this photo, I have one sitting on the relay next to the horn relay socket. The Horn Button socket gets grounded when you press the horn button, so that will activate the new relay.

Now connect a new larger gauge wire to your relay terminal 30 and run it out of the fuse box and to your horn's +12v terminal. I drilled a small hole in the bottom corner of the fuse box to get the wire out. You can see the blue wire in the lower left where I did this.

Now here's what mine really looks like:


Note that I did NOT do mine like the above instructions because I did not install a cube relay, I had to be different. I gutted a standard relay and installed some big fat MOSFETs inside it to power the horns. Doing that meant I didn't have to have a cube relay in the fuse box, not that it's a big deal, but I'm anal like that, doing things the hard way sometimes.

Anyway, if you follow my instructions you will have removed the factory horn relay (where my modifried relay is installed) and used a cube relay instead, probably laying it in the lower left of the fuse box, on top of those fuses. But at least you can see where I tapped into the +12v connector with a big fat red wire and put a 20Amp fuse in line with it. In my instructions that wire would go to your relay terminals 86 & 87.

.

 

You are correct, of course. Don't know what I was thinking, I did it VERY quickly this morning.