Spent the morning removing Maria's tupperware and replacing her stock horns. Removed those and their connectors and mounted a couple of FIAMM Horns that I got from the local auto parts store. Took me a while to wire it up since I tried to reuse the connectors that were used for the stock horns, ended up cutting them off and splicing the wires together instead. Not clean or neat but it works.
The new horns are advertised as putting out 132db of sound. Got a high tone and a low tone horn and the noise they make when they go off together seems a lot louder than the stock horns.
These new horns put out 7dB less than the popular choice amongst motorcyclists who've upgraded from stock horns: Stebel Nautilus (139dB), and I got both at less than the price of one Stebel horn.
I've the beginnings of a headache now as I write this after testing the horn several times. They seemed loud even when I donned my helmet and blasted the horns while my wife listened inside the minivan with windows closed and radio blaring. She said she could still hear the new horns but recommended I do a series of beeps to get better attention. We'll see the next time.
I usually do the short beeps in order to get attention of wandering cagers, but in case of an emergency, I'll most likely just hold down the horn button like I did the other day during my close call with an idiot cager.
Their form factor is same as the stock horns, they just say FIAMM on them instead of Bosch but a quick look at Maria will not betray the difference. Based on what I understand of the decibel scale (see chart below), these horns are about 43 db or 8 times louder than the stock horns which up until recently I thought were pretty loud already (89db). Even accounting for voltage loss from using the stock wires, I've now got horns that are at least four time (probably more) louder than before.
Must go get some aspirin for the headache. : )
Here's hoping I never have to use them in an emergency but....
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