UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

Just fitted a pair of new horns to the Polo.
A pair of Fiamm hi/lo snail type.

Took a couple of hours, never done anything like this before, dad always did it.

Excellent mod, glad I did it now.
Cost me £12.

Here's a sound of before and then after.
Not the best recording, did it with my 7650! This is inside the car.
http://whos.serveftp.com/public/horn.wav

mole

How hard was it to modify the horn? My old '97 has this sad single tone horn that goes 'beep' instead of 'BEEP'...

I've considered the Mk4 Golf horn, but someone warned me that I may destroy the car electronics (in part) because it uses a lot more power than the single horn one. Any thoughts on this?

Was a fairly easy job. You've probably got the same one as me, pathetic isn't it?!

If it draws lots more current than the standard Polo horn it could well do some damage. I decided it wouldn't be too much trouble to use the standard wiring to switch a relay to power the new horns to avoid any damage to my wiring.

So I used the switched (+) from the standard horns, ran a new (-) and new (+) to the battery, fused of course, wired it all up as shown below. And it worked!



I used suitably rated wire for all of this and insulated everything to avoid any trouble.


*This may or may not be the best way to do the job, but it worked for me and avoided any trouble using the standard wiring*

This has turned into a bit of a how-to now.

Whats wrong with the standard horn?

Have you heard it????!!

Yeah, I've got the twin air horn in my car, so it's not standard fair then!!

Thanks a lot for that scheme! *Right-click, save as...*

I'll do this coming summer, I'm sure. The OE bit is pathetic indeed. What were they thinking!?

So what relay should I use anyway? Will any do? Are they different in capacity/current handling?

Thanks Mole!

Will my Polo have the decent double horn thingy when I pick it up this Saturday? I hope so!

No probs.
Spose i should put this in the how-to section!

Who knows what they were thinking!!

Not sure about the relay I'm afraid.
Mine was supplied with the new horns, so you might find that you get one when you buy some.
Someone else may know?

Ratty, be good if it has

So what kit did you get then? Doesn't Hella make these aftermarket kits too?

They may well do, I don't know.

I got mine from a company called Fiamm. There are two horns, one a low tone, and one a high tone, which both sound together, for one mighty sound! It included a relay. Cost me £12 from the London Motorshow last year.

Hope this helps...

When I replaced my horn on my MK4, I just stuck an Audi Low tone snail on it and it was fine. I didn't bother doing any fancy relay business, just out with the old and in with the new.

I never had any problems with it.

But maybe I was just lucky?

The wiring is probably ok, just I'm running two, and didn't want to take the chance. But it would probably be fine!

a few things
nice one on doing the horn cos the stock one is complete ****
as for the stock wireing concerns id be careful because if you pass too much current thru a wire then it will get hot and seen as the horn wire runs inside the loom from the dash. if the horn wire gets hot then it might melt other wires and that means you need to change the loom
on the relay, look at the relay and usually there is some kind of diagram:
on the diagram there might be somthing that looks like a spring, look for the numbers on the lines coming out of it and connect the corresponding terminals to an earth and the other to the original horn wire
on the other 2 terminals you want a permanant fused live coming from the battery and then on the forth connect the horns. the other horn wire wants to go to an earth.
on my golf i hooked into the orijginal horn wire and left the stockies hooked up (2 of) and then used my new wire to run a relay to power a set of tripple air horns :D:D
nice sound clip too
for the relay they are rated, there are 2 numbers usually there is one that will say somthing like 12v20mA which means that the coil (eletro magnet) tekes 20 mA at 12V, then there is another number denoting the rating of the contacts.

what a relay is and how it works

a relay is an electrically operated switch which allows you to use a small current (5A) to drive a high consumption application. tha way it works is very similat to a normal switch in that there are a set of contacts with in the relay that come into contact to allw the secondary circit(sp?) to flow current.the contacts in a normal switch are operated by a button or lever that you operate, in a relay the primarty cuicuit(SP? jeez i need a spell checker) the primary curcuit(arggh) is basically an electromagnet which atracts a rocker that presses the secondary cuircuit(:X) contacts together there is no electrical continuity between the primary and secondary curcuits ( )
primary connections: theese are connected to the original wires for the horn (switched live) and an earth
the secondary connections go to which ever appliance you wish to operate
i.e. live to one and then to the horn in this case

relays car be used to increce the operational eficiency of many systems within a car as the longer a wire is the more resistance it offers so if you have 10 feet of wire in between the head light switch and the bulb there is a lot of resistance meaning the lights are slightly less bright than they could be which is why most headlight upgrade loown consist of a relay switched by the wire that would perate the bulb and the secondary contacts go to the batt and then on to the bulb
sorry for it being so long