DIY Air Horn Install

Since there isn’t one on the electrical setup required to put your own air horn in. Here goes.

Items Purchased
Plug-n-Play Wiring Harness for Stebel Nautilus Compact Air Horns $20
Stebel Nautilus Compact Motorcycle Air Horn - Loud – Black $40

Tools
Wire cutters
Wrench
Drill with bits
End Crimpers
Amp meter
Extra nuts, bolts and washers



Overview
You are going to install a switch, called a relay, that will open/close when you press your horn. In order to do this you must connect your old horn wire to the ‘switch’ side of the relay and the new horn to the ‘power’ side of the relay. You can test the switch with a 9v battery if you cannot figure it out from the pictures/documents

Steps
1. Remove old horn and Honda connection from old horn power connection wire
2. Drill small hole into fuse box called ‘pass through’ ensure it’s undersized slightly to provide water tight seal around the red 30A power line.
3. While you have the drill, switch bits and drill out threading on old horn mount to frame called ‘mounted to old frame’ in picture. Just slightly larger than mounting bolt for horn
4. Remove 30A wire from relay
5. Remove 30A fuse
6. Connect 30A female end to connection closest to you while at the front of the car – there are two. One is pos the other neg
7. Run line through ‘pass through’ will require removal of end
8. Cut to length, put new end and connect to relay
9. Connect relay to frame with nut, bolt and double washers
10. Ground black and one blue line to bolt off fuse box – I cut the extra off and made new connections to keep clean
11. Pass mass of horn wires down by the old horn power, between air box to horn location.
12. Install female end on old horn wire and connect to non-ground horn on wire kit (this will go back to the relay and trigger the switch when you press the horn)
13. Install horn sideways with the direction of the air horns pointed to the bumper (see air on picture)
14. Place a piece of foam between horn and frame to reduce buzz
15. Connect power and ground to air horn – I cut to length to keep clean
16. Now test your horn. If it works you failed to remove 30A fuse – really stupid of you.
17. Since you’re smart and weren’t fooled by step 16, put 30A fuse back in
18. Test horn with 30A fuse now installed. It should work. If not retrace your work
19. Put fuse box lid on and go for a drive

Pictures
Fuse Box
Complete Setup

FYI:
Old horn was grounded to frame by bolts, nothing else will be connected this way so you must ground
Never directly connect this to the battery
If you fail to remove 30A fuse as mention in step five you’re asking for trouble
If you want to be a real pro you’ll shrink fit male/female connections to seal. Requires hot gun and know how.

Note
The air horn itself comes with a relay but no wires. I found it easier and cheaper to buy the kit with the air horn.

Note 2
With this wiring kit you could easily change out the horn for anything. Nothing will draw more than 30A which you’re wired for.

Thoughts:
This is really a 3/10 job. Creating the ends is the toughest part.

Horns
The horn is louder, 139 vs 108 on my old AP2 horn. Having yet used this I don’t know if it’s better heard. The sound quality of the horn is nicer and louder when stopped at testing. It truly sounds Italian which I like. It becomes your car alarm horn too. If there is a second honda horn it still runs.


Key words: air horn, airhorn, air horn install, installing air horn, DIY Air Horn

 

We need a video!

 

youtube the horns sound

 

had it. hated it. removed it.

/.02

 

 

well, those pictures came out bigger than i thought...

 

i would try to mount the relay downward with a L bracket if you can

 

Second that! That will keep the relay connectors from getting wet!

 

I purposely provided them as links for a reason... so I wouldn't run out of bandwidth and the images are large.

 

You two are funny. Ever look at the top of your fuse box? Not very wet. Place it as you see fit. The connections are largely sealed and the relay is sealed. The unit was built to get wet.