Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums General Tech New Horn location

Hey guys, what do you think? I had my horns up the middle with my "performance" oil cooler setup (bottom photo) but since I put the old cooler back on, I needed a new place. This is something I had thought about before the new cooler anyway... Let me know what you think. I could re-do it to make them back a little bit and up a little bit, but right now it is the simplest possible arrangement! Figured I would run it by you guys before I solder everything up.

New setup.


Old setup.

Benny, it looks nice. But why did you switch back to the factory oil cooler?.....Angelis

I was running too hot... We had a couple theories floating around over at Pat's, the most popular of which is that the oil lines are too short, so the coolers themselves sit way too close to the headers. Getting that temp gauge really screwed up my plans for the bike!!

That's where I've put mine - not the greatest place in the world but at least it doesn't block the airflow to the cooler & cylinders. They tend to pick up mud splatter though, which's why mine face down. Guess that's hard to do with "disk" horns though.

Now I just gotta find a way to paint the red bits black.



Matt

I don't see where you've got a whole lot of choices.
Mike (caseml) had a huge old harley horn mounted between his forks that looked pretty nice, but dual horns are another story....

They look nice down there, but maybe too close to the road and grime will pile up fast.

With a little turning and bending of the brackets I managed to put mine in the original spot. I dont think the oil cooler is affected because it is so open there.

Grump, Bluesbass(not base) has a big one in between the forks too, but he actually whacked the fender with it he said on a big bump.

Matt, mine are mounted high enough and actually stick forward quite a bit, maybe hard to see from the pic, so that I'm thinking they might miss a good portion of the road grime from the front wheel... but it remains to be seen! As for painting yours, are they plastic? They make spray paint for plastic now... works well!!

IMOK, I had mine double stacked kinda like yours, but after all the temp issues I was having this summer, I decided to not take any chances!! If I do find I'm getting a lot of grime, I may shift them up a bit. My other thought was to mount them back to back facing sideways... I dunno. Got all the wiring done last night! Lookin good.

You guys with two horns, how did you handle the splicing of the wires?

I think it looks great there Ben, much better than the original way you had it.

I originally made up a bracket that went across the original mount position and had a horn on either end. They'd sit just forward and below the tank, but they really stuck out like the proverbial dog's testicles (and looked somewhat like them too). If I'd bent either end of the bracket so they we in-line with the bike instead of across it they might've looked better but I decided to go with what I have now as a simpler solution.

Ahh, the wiring - what a pain. I don't know about your horns but mine don't have a seperate earth terminal - they earth through the mounting bolt. That was fine when I had them on the top bracket but the control bar's painted. I ended up using rubber to both insulate the mounts from the control bar and ensure a tight mount, then ran earth wires to the bolts. Then just use the original horn siring to trip the relay.

Running the wiring turned out easier than planning it - because of the high current draw with twin horns you don't want to use the standard wiring since it's not fused. I ran seperate power & earth wires (with an inline fuse holder in the power line) from the battery to a relay that's mounted on the same bracket as my alarm (where the AI pump used to be, above the coils). Then I ran a power & earth line from the relay to the first horn, then across to the second one. You can get automotive wiring that's good for up to 20 amps and has the two colour coded wires already in a black outer sheath so it looks original.

Not entirely happy with the position of the relay - it's too exposed to rain etc. When I get the bike back I'm thinking of moving it to the same area as the headlight & driving light relays and the turn signal flasher.

Hmm I'd actually written this lot up in a webpage for my site but forgotten to upload it - that's fixed now

Matt

From the pic. it looks like it does block air flow. Nd why did you use green wire?

From the pic. it looks like it does block air flow. And why did you use green wire?

Yeah I have a relay. Mounted it up to where the AI used to bolt. Works nice! I spent all this time splicing and soldering etc, and sitting hear I realized I could have just crimped another wire in with one of the terminals. May go back and do that... Much cleaner. So hard to shrink wrap a T joint anyway!!! I did use a lot of liquid electrical tape under the shrink wrap so I bet it's fine.. but it would be so much cleaner.

Thanks John, I think I like them there too. The bracket is REAL solid too!! No wiggle at all!

So far, I have not had any issues with OH. The original horn was in that position and it had a bigger diameter.

I used green wire cause that was the only wire I had lying around of that gauge. Yea, it looks dumb. Note to self: change it to black.

Quote:

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You guys with two horns, how did you handle the splicing of the wires?

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I used a radio shack relay and an inline fuse under the tank. If you look at the picture, the red one comes from a hot splice/crimp under the seat. It goes into the relay and the green one comes out and goes to one of the horns and then cascade over to the second one. The horn brackets are ground.

I then plugged the original horn plug into the relay's on/off prongs. I plan to change the green wire to black and use dielectric grease on everything.

Setup is almost exactly like mine! Except my fuse is what I cam off the underseat connection with. And my horns do have a ground lead, so I have them going directly back to the battery.

Fuse:


Relay:

I picked up a much louder horn from Pep Boys, trimmed the actual horn portion and it is now under the right side of the tank with the opening of the horn pointing down and forward. Can't see it at all and it's twice as loud. Seems like a perfect fit to me. I think I did that about two hours after I got home with it. Couldn't stand the beep!
Vic

I found these interesting links for a wiring harness...for those who don't want to mess around too much:

M/C Horn Relay Review

Eastern Beaver Horn Kits

Should save a headache or two.

Brad