Horn upgrades are easy

[upsguy]

So many of you probably know this but I didn't.  The horn on our beloved bike makes a very very sad little meep noise that no one can hear.  This is a full on safety hazard.  I always assumed that upgrading the horn would require a crazy amount of wiring and modification but it simply does not.  You can very quickly and easily upgrade the horn on your bike in a few minutes. 

If you buy a horn like the one I'll link below that I bought on amazon and installed tonight, it has the same contacts as the horn on our bikes so the wires just slide off the contacts and slide onto the contacts of the new horn then there is one little nut.  It doesn't matter which wire you put on which of the 2 contacts.

The whole thing took me 7 minutes tonight.  If your bike is cold you can simply turn the handlebars to the right and reach under the fairing on the left side of the bike to swap out the horn with a rachet/socket, however I had just ridden my bike home from work tonight and it was still hot so I removed 3 fairing bolts to give myself more room because I'm impatient and didn't want to wait for it to cool.    

You can use pretty much any horn, but you need to keep a couple things in mind: 1) space.  There's a decent amount of room between the fairing on the left side of the frame, but if you get something huge it might not fit there.  2) amperage.  We have limited amperage on our electrical system.  If you're running a horn that draws over 6 amps, you're going to want to install a relay instead of the easy plug & play we're talking about here.  The horn I bought and will link below is plug & play and doesn't require any relays or wiring. 

I don't know how many decibels our sad little stock horn is but this sounds almost twice as loud to me and is tested at 130 decibels.  I went out for a quick ride tonight and double tapping the horn, pedestrians a few hundred yards up the road were turning and looking. 

https://www.amazon.com/Waterproof-Electric-Universal-Motorcycle-Scooter%EF%BC%88Chrome%EF%BC%89/dp/B08K35P1J6/

[Bluesmudge]

I went for one of the big horns that require a relay. I found that even though it's so loud I get weird responses from vehicles around me because it sounds more like a car or truck horn. People expect motorcycle horns to sound a certain way apparently.
In the end I have been using my horn less and less. Usually if you have time to honk your horn you have time to avoid the problem you are honking at.