New Horn

We've had the C for a little over a week now and I finally got around to beginning my small list of modifications. Today I swapped out the stock Denso horn for a pair of Fiamm dual tone disc horns. Overall the install was relatively easy..... I used the bumper removal How To from here which was very helpful. I only ran into a few issues with the install.

First I was going to mount them each separately to the bumper support in front of the radiator, however I ran into the combined problems of ill-charged drill batteries, dull bits, and my wife walked outside and saw I was about to put a hole in her car. So I ended up going with the stock mounting point which caused it's own problems.

Second the length of the brackets which came on the Fiamm horns was a little shorter than I really needed them to be if I was going to use the stock mounting point. I had to bend the little tab which keeps the stock horn from rotating as the bolt is tightened to allow the bracket to occupy it's space, and I ended up needing to remove the plastic baffle which covers between the tops of the radiator and bumper cover. The second horn was touching the bottom of it and making a really really weird vibrating noise.

Once those things were addressed everything went pretty well. In the end I realized I could have just left every bolt in the bottom of the bumper and released the top clips/anchors as that gives enough space to remove the aforementioned baffle and access the horns. My other car's bumper cover can be pulled the same way so I'm not sure why I didn't think of it from the start. This turned out to be a good thing since I had to remove that baffle after the fact due to the weird sound output.

The horns were about $16 each, plus a few extra dollars in wiring/connectors as my supplies were running low. I did have to use a longer bolt to replace the stock mounting bolt to accommodate the extra bracket, and I spaced that out from the mount with a nut to make space for the back of the first horn. As compared to the Fiamm Freeway Blasters on my other car (trumpet style horn) these are far more low toned and sound fantastic.

I only snapped a few pictures. The first is the back of the new horns, how they're mounted together and how I wired the splitter. The second is peeking at them through the upper grill before I removed the baffle, and before I made sure they weren't touching each other.





More to come.....

 

Aside from not getting that baffle back on I'm pleased with the install. If I had a bracket several inches longer I could have mounted the second horn a little lower to clear the baffle. Or if I'd drilled through the sheet metal to mount them lower.

Any horn will probably be louder and sound better than the stock Denso. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just small. These two are rated at 110 decibels, though I don't know what distance they took that reading from. Still they're plenty loud.

If you do go with the trumpet style horn just make sure to mount it with the bell facing downwards so it doesn't collect water.

 

Oh yeah, now I know I didn't need to remove everything. Still there's something to be said for just getting things out of the way. It took less than 10 minutes to remove the cover and made the whole thing that much less stressful. At the time I wasn't sure what was connected where and how much that baffle could be bent without breaking. Plus the forum search function was giving me issues that day so I couldn't search for horn threads. With everything removed it did give me more room to work, and given I was planning on drilling into the bumper supports I would have needed to clear the bumper out of the way to get the drill in anyway.

I replaced the horns in my Mazda years ago without removing anything. That horn was behind the driver's fog light and I didn't even jack the car up. Just pulled it to the edge of the carport where the driveway started to slope downwards. Of course I ended up only having enough room to fit one hand and peek with one eye, or two hands and go by feel. If I'd realized I could have removed the bumper cover in five minutes I would have done it no questions asked.

I'll probably go back at some point with a longer bracket for the driver's side horn and put the baffle back in. I think I have a piece of aluminum bar stock somewhere, however I just moved and everything is precisely where I'm not sure where to find it.

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Definitely a mod worth your time. ​

 

It really is hard to choose horns sound unheard. Even ones you can find with audio clips online almost never sound like they do in real life. It helps if you can find someone's horns to go listen to.

I'm satisfied with the Fiamm horns I installed. Nice sound. Loud, but sounds like a car.