Replacing the horn Beep-Beep!

A side effect of fitting the Skyline option Spec 2 grille, is that you can see through the mesh of the grille into the car. Now obviously there isn't all that much to look at in there, a bonnet release, a bit of radiator and the horns are just about visible. It becomes much more apparent when popping the bonnet to reveal all.

As it stands under the hood especially at the front of the car, things are not in too bad a shape. I removed my very manky and rusty bonnet catch for one that I had refurbished some weeks ago. So that was good. However now my eye was drawn to the original horn fittings, which were looking tired and worse for wear. Quite understandable as these are by design, front and weather facing. In short, something had to be done to beautify this area.

 The old fittings are pretty simple and straight forward to get at. Each horn has one electrical connector and is held in place by a bracket connected with one bolt to the central support for the bonnet catch. Simply remove the connectors and unbolt the two M12 bolts.

The replacement horns came complete with some brackets which could be bent into shape. Keeping the trumpet part facing down (so water etc. can't get in), they horns were test fitted.

The replacement units were from Ring Automotive and can be seen here the pack comes with the parts needed but no wiring. Also there is a relay supplied, but this is not required on this installation.

Wiring is actually simple. If you check out your front engine bay fuse box you will see that there is a relay for the horn, delivering 12V every time you 'honk'. There is nothing super special about the replacements, although they do need to be suitably earthed. Having worked this out it is simple to attach an earth wire of suitable thickness (17/21 amp) following the existing cable back to a suitable termination point.

As you can see in the picture, I even kept the original Nissan terminals for the live connectors.

Okay, so now the wires are done and the brackets are 'bent' all that was needed is a quick clean up of the finished area. The horns were bolted into place and given a test 'beep' to make sure that they were working.

The finished result is quite pleasing and in total I would suggest it took me a couple of hours to do total.

Things you will need.

Horns.. duh!

Electrical connectors 2x spades, earth and splitter.

Suitable wire

12mm spanner and a crimp tool.