Nuje
Top Post Dawg
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2005
- Location
- Island near Vancouver
- TDI
- 2002 Golf 6MT; 2015 Sportwagen 6MT; 2016 A3 e-tron 6DSG
So a couple weeks back, I’m watching the Tour de France, and as usual, Skoda - a Euro sub-brand of VW - is one of the main sponsors, so a lot of the team support cars and all of the “official” cars following the race are Skoda wagons….and presumably (almost for sure) built on the same MQB platform as my Mk7 Golf Sportwagen.
With a LOT of cars often having to go around scrawny guys clad only lycra zipping around on bicycles, they’re often tooting the horn on the car as a “hey - coming around you” kinda way. It’s a cute little melodic triple-tone sound - a friendly “beep-beep” compared to the HONNNNK of the typical car horn.
And, given that I was up too late that night, of course I stay up later starting with a Google search of “Tour de France car horns”, which lands me at the website (hornwarehouse.com - where else) of a Dutch company that seems to specialize in horns (as one should expect from a horn warehouse").
So, roughly 20min and $100CAD later, I have a triple-set of horns on the way to me. Less than a week later, they’re on my doorstep.
Knowing that they were obviously installed on MQB cars, I figure there’s gotta be a good place for them, and sure enough, on the RH side of the car, analogous to where the windshield washer fluid sits on the LH side, there’s a nice gaping chasm in which looks like plenty of room for some horns and a compressor.
The mounting location is the frame member there, but I wasn’t too keen on drilling into that and putting in riv-nuts (although I did purchase some), but then hunting around the garage for something that might help me (wasn’t even sure what I had in mind - probably more just looking for inspiration), I came upon some aluminum flat stock - roughly 50mm/2” width by ⅛”.
It was also around this time that I noticed that there was a threaded mounting post up near the top of the frame rail and a metal “tag” than hung down - a little flimsy, but still good and solid enough to provide both lateral and vertical support.
Took a while to figure out the arrangement to get around the existing horn and mounts at the end of the frame rail, and a few unnecessary holes were drilled while I tried to fit things, but I eventually found that putting the holes for the horns 70mm apart allowed for sufficient clearance between them, and fit nicely in to the space I had.
You know all those little bits and spacers and whatnot you get when you buy a mount for the flatscreen TV? Well, to that special someone in your life who's constantly asking "why the hell are these still around; why don't you throw them out?!"..... this....THIS is why!
The compressor is supposed to be installed vertically and “close to” the horns - I had thought about putting it up behind the headlight, but that really kinda cluttered up that area, so I looked to avoid it.
I found, though, that on the backside of that aluminum flat stock on which I’d installed the horns, I could get it in there at a bit of an angle so that I still had room to route the air lines.
Wiring: Always an adventure for me. Every time I *think* I understand what a wiring diagram is telling me, the sparks or inaction (or horn that doesn't turn off) tell me otherwise.
With the help and patience of a certain Mr. @Cuzoe, though, I finally figured out that this was the diagram I needed to be following, and what should go where.
In the end, it was pretty simple: Big honkin’ (12ga) wire from the relay box in the engine compartment.
There's an empty relay socket with continuous +12V coming out of that socket I'm pointing at. I put a fused wire in there, ran it out the side (forward of that 508 relay) by Dremeling a little groove there to accommodate the outgoing 12ga wire - that goes to T30 on the relay.
The “trigger” wire (I just forked the non-ground wire that was going to the OE horn to tell the relay to start relaying) goes to T85 on the relay. T87 (12ga) goes to the positive post on the compressor. T86 (12ga) goes to ground.
The negative of the compressor and the side post (not exactly sure what its function is, but I followed the diagram) tie together and then go to ground as well (all 12ga wire).
Given the short duration of the use of the horn, I thought 12ga wire was maybe a little more robust than necessary, but I had a roll of it, so why not.
So, here we are with the wiring relay (included, along with the air lines in the kit) installed; black Goop™ added to the bottom of the relay to help weather-seal it).
And the final result...
(Looks like I can't embed my quick little video with sound, so here's a Dropbox link that should play it.)
Coda: First retrofit I've done which has undoubtedly SAVED me money. I noticed when I was under there looking for a spot to mount the compressor that one of the AC lines had been bent and was rubbing up against a bolt. You can see in this photo (after I pulled it away) the doink in the aluminum line already and the bolt it was rubbing against. Minimum $1000 saving vs. the $150CAD total in parts, shipping, import fees, etc.
With a LOT of cars often having to go around scrawny guys clad only lycra zipping around on bicycles, they’re often tooting the horn on the car as a “hey - coming around you” kinda way. It’s a cute little melodic triple-tone sound - a friendly “beep-beep” compared to the HONNNNK of the typical car horn.
And, given that I was up too late that night, of course I stay up later starting with a Google search of “Tour de France car horns”, which lands me at the website (hornwarehouse.com - where else) of a Dutch company that seems to specialize in horns (as one should expect from a horn warehouse").
So, roughly 20min and $100CAD later, I have a triple-set of horns on the way to me. Less than a week later, they’re on my doorstep.
Knowing that they were obviously installed on MQB cars, I figure there’s gotta be a good place for them, and sure enough, on the RH side of the car, analogous to where the windshield washer fluid sits on the LH side, there’s a nice gaping chasm in which looks like plenty of room for some horns and a compressor.
The mounting location is the frame member there, but I wasn’t too keen on drilling into that and putting in riv-nuts (although I did purchase some), but then hunting around the garage for something that might help me (wasn’t even sure what I had in mind - probably more just looking for inspiration), I came upon some aluminum flat stock - roughly 50mm/2” width by ⅛”.
It was also around this time that I noticed that there was a threaded mounting post up near the top of the frame rail and a metal “tag” than hung down - a little flimsy, but still good and solid enough to provide both lateral and vertical support.
Took a while to figure out the arrangement to get around the existing horn and mounts at the end of the frame rail, and a few unnecessary holes were drilled while I tried to fit things, but I eventually found that putting the holes for the horns 70mm apart allowed for sufficient clearance between them, and fit nicely in to the space I had.
You know all those little bits and spacers and whatnot you get when you buy a mount for the flatscreen TV? Well, to that special someone in your life who's constantly asking "why the hell are these still around; why don't you throw them out?!"..... this....THIS is why!
The compressor is supposed to be installed vertically and “close to” the horns - I had thought about putting it up behind the headlight, but that really kinda cluttered up that area, so I looked to avoid it.
I found, though, that on the backside of that aluminum flat stock on which I’d installed the horns, I could get it in there at a bit of an angle so that I still had room to route the air lines.
Wiring: Always an adventure for me. Every time I *think* I understand what a wiring diagram is telling me, the sparks or inaction (or horn that doesn't turn off) tell me otherwise.
With the help and patience of a certain Mr. @Cuzoe, though, I finally figured out that this was the diagram I needed to be following, and what should go where.
In the end, it was pretty simple: Big honkin’ (12ga) wire from the relay box in the engine compartment.
There's an empty relay socket with continuous +12V coming out of that socket I'm pointing at. I put a fused wire in there, ran it out the side (forward of that 508 relay) by Dremeling a little groove there to accommodate the outgoing 12ga wire - that goes to T30 on the relay.
The “trigger” wire (I just forked the non-ground wire that was going to the OE horn to tell the relay to start relaying) goes to T85 on the relay. T87 (12ga) goes to the positive post on the compressor. T86 (12ga) goes to ground.
The negative of the compressor and the side post (not exactly sure what its function is, but I followed the diagram) tie together and then go to ground as well (all 12ga wire).
Given the short duration of the use of the horn, I thought 12ga wire was maybe a little more robust than necessary, but I had a roll of it, so why not.
So, here we are with the wiring relay (included, along with the air lines in the kit) installed; black Goop™ added to the bottom of the relay to help weather-seal it).
And the final result...
(Looks like I can't embed my quick little video with sound, so here's a Dropbox link that should play it.)
Coda: First retrofit I've done which has undoubtedly SAVED me money. I noticed when I was under there looking for a spot to mount the compressor that one of the AC lines had been bent and was rubbing up against a bolt. You can see in this photo (after I pulled it away) the doink in the aluminum line already and the bolt it was rubbing against. Minimum $1000 saving vs. the $150CAD total in parts, shipping, import fees, etc.
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