Installing an air horn..?

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Shadetree

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My wife jokes that the horn on my '97 EB sounds like it should be on a go-cart so I bought an air horn at Harbor Freight...The first sentence on the instructions say "Installstion should be completed by a qualified technician".. Taking note that the catch word in that sentence is "should"...I'm going to take a stab at it myself...if I can get some help...The kit has two air horns (135 db), a 4" tall compressor, A 4 pole 2 way 40A relay, with hardware, air tube and wiring diagram....I'm fine with mounting the hardware but not sure about hooking up the electrical..The diagram shows the compressor wired to the relay, a wire from the relay to an existing vehicle fused circuit, a wire going to the horn pushbutton, and a wire going to the "live positive point of the original horn" with a wire going from there to the air horns....Is this enough info..?...As always..your help is appreciated.
 

Thermo

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Shadetree, what I have done in the past is left the factory horns where they are (wiring and all) and then wired the air horns in parallel via a switch. I use a single pole, double throw switch (SPDT, or ON-OFF-ON, switch). So, what this allows you to do is if you want the factory horn, you flip the switch to one of the ONs, if you want the air horns, you flip it to the other ON. This comes in handy if you are questioned by the police. Keeping the switch hidden also helps.

As for wiring it up, as long as you use some common sense, it will be just fine. Now, with that being said, I will also point out some things to make your life easier and to get long term reliability out of the horn.

First off, a relay has 2 sides to it, a switch side and a power side. The power side of the relay is really nothing more than a switch. This side of the relay should be wired with 12 gauge wiring as a minimum. I would tell you to remove the cover off of your starter solenoid, attach a wire to the battery terminal there, run it to a fuse (rated for 40 amps) then to the relay, to the pump, and then to ground. All this wiring should be 12 gauge. You will now have power for the pump when you want to honk the horn.

Now, for the other side of the relay. First off, I will recommend that you wire up this side to a switchable power source (ie, one that looses power when the truck is turned off). I say this so you don't wake up to a truck that has a dead battery because the relay failed or your wiring did something goofey and the horn ran for an hour or so and you didn't know it. All of this wiring will only need to be like 20/18 gauge wiring as this will all be very low power stuff. Keep in mind that the horn for your truck has power on it all the time and only activates when you push on the steering wheel because you are applying a ground, which then completes the circuit. So, if you do as I say, you will access the base of the steering column and find the wire that runs up to the horn switch in the steering wheel (I don't have a diagram that shows me this color wire) and you are going to cut this wire. The end that goes up the steering column will get attached to the center post of the switch. The other end of the wire will get attached to one of the outside posts of the switch (does not matter which one). Now to make the horn work, you are going to run wiring from your switchable power source, to the relay (switch side) and then back to the remaining open terminal on the switch.

At this point, with the truck in the RUN position, when you hit the horn button, you should have 1 of two horns to honk (the factory horn or the aftermarket one-assuming you have connected the air line between the compressor and the horns). The only caution is that if you flip the switch to the center OFF position, you won't have any horn. There are some switches out there that have simply two ON positions, but those are generally hard to find, hence why I say to find the ON-OFF-ON switch as these are dime a dozen.

If you need more help, let me know.
 
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Shadetree

Shadetree

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Thanks Thermo....lots of great info...I was hoping to disconnect the factory horn and just use the existing wiring to connect the air horn assembly by using as little additional wiring, switches, etc. as possible..Please excuse my ignorance, but is that possible ?...I enjoy doing mechanical stuff, but am severely electrically challenged..I'm always paranoid about messing with the factory electrical system...I never had a problem with the pre 70s vehicles, but I've made a few costly mistakes on the new stuff...Thanks for you help...
 

stamp11127

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Follow Thermo's advice on the two sets of horns since Harbor Freight isn't known for top of the line products. In the event the horn or compressor fails you'll still have the other horn.
 

Thermo

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Shadetree, you can cut the wires to the horns and use those those to power the compressor for the horns. That is a relay'ed wire, so, there is plenty of room to power the relay that comes with the kit. Unfortunately, that circuit does not have the power to power the compressor straight. The horn circuit is only rated for 20 amps, you need 40. In your case with how you want to do things, you would wire up the power side of the relay like I said in my first post. The switch side of the relay you would run the wire from the horns to one side of the relay and then a wire straight to the chassis on the other side. That is it. The rest is routing the tubing to feed the output of the compressor to the air horns.
 

Thermo

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If you are splicing wires inside the engine bay, I highly recommend finding some stuff called "Raychem". It is shrink tubing on steroids. when you see it, you will understand what I am saying. If you are worried about it surviving under the hood of the truck, DON'T!!!!! I use this stuff at work to survive a nuclear reactor accident. Need I say more. Specifically, you will want to find some stuff called "Raychem WCSF-070". This should handle most of what you want. It is a little harder to shrink that normal shrink tubing, but this stuff is much thicker than standard shrink tubing and also has a glue on the inside. So, once you make up the connections and you seal this stuff around that connection properly (should form a small orange donut on the end around the wire), it will be just as if you never cut the wire.
 
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Shadetree

Shadetree

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Thanks Thermo...Can't get to it until Saturday, but this sounds like the way I'll do it..You're right about the Raychem. They also make a sealant coated tape..My installation techs use Raychem when they wire Ignition Interlock devices to a vehicle's starter...I'll let you know my tesults..Thanks
 
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