Hella Dual Horns: Loud Enough To Get Your Point Across In Traffic
By Rick Reimundez
Ever wish your regular factory horn was just a bit louder? Like freakin’ freight train loud? Or maybe like a fog horn on a ship? While these dual-tone air horns from Hella aren’t exactly that loud, they’re damn close, delivering 118 dB of ear-damaging sound — which is way, way louder than your weenie-ass stock beeper.
That’s loud enough to scare small pets and little old ladies. But they’re really at home helping you remind the guy swerving in front of you that he needs to hang up and drive. Maybe he won’t listen, but with these horns under the hood, at least you’ll know that he knows that you know. You know?
The dual tone kit comes with two trumpets, a compressor, and some clear tubing to hook it all up. There’s also an electrical relay, instructions, and mounting brackets. The physical install is pretty easy once you pick a location where they’ll fit. Although it comes with mounting brackets, you’ll likely have to fabricate something to properly mount the trumpets within the space constraints of your car.
The wiring can get a bit tricky depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. In my case, I installed the horns with a separate button on the dash. I wanted to maintain the availability of my stock horn on the steering wheel for day to day honks, saving my secret weapon for the worst assholes.
You can see in the picture above my red Hella trumpets above and behind the black stock horn. If you’re using a separate button, you should make use of the relay. But if you’re just going to unplug the factory horn and plug in the compressor in the same spot, you likely won’t need the relay as the factory system — particularly on newer cars – already has a one. If you’re installing these in a classic muscle car then it’s probably a good idea to wire in the relay per the installation instructions.
This is a great weekend afternoon project, and at around $35 it won’t set you too far back. Hella offers a full line of horns, including a triple tone kit (with three trumpets instead of two) and a set of disc-style horns they call Supertone.
Hella Dual-Tone Air Horn Kit [Summit Racing]
General Horn Information [Hella]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon
September 19th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Having grown up hearing about cops giving tickets for excessive exhaust and people who lean on their horns too aggressively, I’ve been gunshy about hooking these up. Anyone know CA laws regarding aftermarket horns in the 118 dB range? Is it encompassed in the existing noise ordinance for exhaust and stereos?
September 19th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Fong,
Much like the open exhaust issue from last week - it’s all in who you run across and how you use it. I purposely hooked mine up so that I could maintain my normal stock horn for every day use. Then used the air horn sparingly and only when it was warranted, and I never had a problem, but as with so many things, YMMV (oh, an I’m in NY)