Making bracket to mount 4 Hella Supertone horns in an RS

I finally got around to re-installing my Hella horns today. Two years ago some lady backed into me at a stoplight, and Morrie's body shop took the Hella's out when they fixed it; they've been sitting in a box since.

For a while, I've wanted two sets of Hella's because .. well, why the hell not, right? So I grabbed another set off amazon and started wondering how a noob like me would get four Hella's mounted. Even two don't fit that easily in an RS.

I went to Menards and found a 36"x1" flat bar of 14 gauge steel. Looked like it would do the trick, so I grabbed it and a rattle can of flat black and a couple handfuls of nuts and bolts.

Keep in mind, I don't know jack, and I'm a noob. Can't weld (maybe could, never tried, don't have the equipment), but I do have an angle grinder.

Took some measurements, and cut up the bar into three lengths. One 14" long and two 9" long. Drilled some holes to bolt the bars together and mount the horns, and gave er a few coats of that flat black paint. I also sprayed the tops of a few bolts to keep any shiny metal from showing.




Then I bolted the pieces together like an arch and mounted the Hella horns. In order to clear the grill and bumper, the horns had to be set back from the bracket a bit. Since I also don't have a metal brake/bender, I just stacked some washers and nuts.




Of course, I ended up grabbing a couple bolts that were different from the others, damn hardware stores can't be consistent, and all my measurements went to **** as the horn was hitting the taller bolt head instead of just clearing it. I tightened down the nut and the little brackets that come on the hella's just bent. In the end, it turned out of, but this wasn't exactly how I planned it.




So here's the bracket all together. You can see how the top horns are angled in from the bent brackets due to the large bolt head underneath them.





Then I wired all the horns together, just going from one to the next to the next, etc, and finally to a connecter at the end (out of picture). By wiring behind the bracket, everything stays hidden. My only concern is heat from the close proximity to the condenser and radiator.





I used insulated spade/blade connectors (crimp style). I was able to just fit two 16 gauge wires in there so I could have a wire in and a wire out to the next horn. You can see I like to heat shrink wrap everything, too, and use lots of zip strips.





With all the wiring done, I installed the bracket. You can see I mounted it with the stock bolt on the bottom of the hood latch. I had to take the bottom hella's off to put the bracket in - a gear wrench is a big help attaching the nut to hold the hella's to the bracket once the bracket is sitting there so close to the condenser. I did bend a couple fins somehow on one side; must not have been paying enough attention




I took the wiring off the factory horn (the horn is actually out in this photo), and attached an insulated spade connector to it. This is positive voltage that will activate the relay when the horn on the steering wheel is pushed.




I wired up the relay using a harness. These are really handy, and cheap - you can get packs of relays and harnesses on Amazon. I used an inline fuse holder on the battery site, and on the upper right of the picture you can see the connector that goes from the relay to the wiring on the horn bracket.





I hooked all the wiring up; left more extra than I really should have - I left the power and ground wires long and as you can see I just had to bundle them up anyway. I zip stripped the relay harness and fuse holder up so that water will shed over them rather than drip into the connectors. Admittedly, I could have done a cleaner job here.





With everything installed and working, I put the grill and plate back on and buttoned it all up. Now, because of that larger bolt head getting in the way of the upper hella's, the horns were now pushing into the grill. The grill I have isn't stock and has less room behind it. It also has a gap, but with the horns pushing into it the gap looks better than it did before, so win I guess... (I should just go back to a stock grill ugh).

So, final result:




It's loud as ****ing hell. And I did leave the stock horn hooked up with the hella's.

It's a shame, on my way back from the hardware store, some lady in an SUV almost merged into me and I had to use the lame stock horn. Next time someone cuts me off, they will hear about it.

So, there you go. Even a noob with a few hand tools can get some stuff done.

 

Nice job! It looks really good. Not sure how much 2 more make but I would not want to be standing in front of it when it goes off.

 

Hard to say how much louder it may be; it's been like 2 years since I had just the two hella horns in. Theoretically, it should be 3 dB more, at most.

Even knowing what to expect and when it's coming, they still make me twitch in a bit of pain. They are unmistakably loud as ****. The whole front of the car resonates with it; it sounds sooo angry.

And, of course, I really did it more to see how it would look with 4 horns. Not many people do 4 and I like the red accent. Adds a little more color.

 

That is a Hellaofalot of battery drain!!! It looks cool tho ***************** D

 

I'm totally doing the "rear facing"!!!!!

 

Oh lord, I had hoped these damned things died.

 

And here I was thinking they should come stock. For some reason a subaru just doesn't look like a Subaru without a pair of hellas poking out from behind the grill.