Horn Install

[slode]

My next project to get Sylvia ready for spring is to pick out a horn and install it if necessary.  Many waters I plan to sail require some horn on board.  I've never been a fan of the portable safety horns carried by many small craft owners.  And I think it would be cool to have a big loud horn to scare the crap out of power boaters who aren't paying attention. But maybe I could be persuaded.

Have any of you installed a permanent horn on your Eclipse and have any recommendations for equipment and installation position for the horn and switch.  Or a good reason to not bother with it and just go with a portable unit.

[TedStrat]

I'm definitely thinking the same....the portable horns always seem to hide from me and once when I was down below looking for something I leaned on it and pretty near blew my eardrums out!
On a serious note, Jamestown Distributors has some I had looked at. Definitely should not be the trumpet kind since just another thing to catch a line on. They have some flush mounted ones with built-in pump for air. I'm a bit queasy about cutting a hole anyware though so I haven't decided yet.

[slode]

I believe I found the perfect horn.

https://www.amazon.com/SeaSense-50031902-12-Volt-Horn/dp/B0019LY8DY/ref=lp_3399081_1_15?s=boating-water-sports&ie=UTF8&qid=1515681903&sr=1-15

Will mount right under the bow navigation light and run wire through the bow pulpit right along with the navigation light wiring.  No drilling, out of the way, and should look pretty nice.  I may have to make a bracket, or hopefully be able to bend the included bracket to mount on the same pad the light is attached to.   I have a push button switch in my box of electrical stuff I plan on putting right next to the bilge pump handle door, nice and close to other wiring.  And I may wire one in parallel inside the cabin for use in case of getting stuck in fog on the big lakes.

I'll post pics of the installation when done in a couple weeks.

[slode]

I finished my horn install.  Everything went according to plan but I found getting the new wire run was harder than expected.  Getting a snake, or anything else, around the corner of the bow pulpit was impossible.  I tried every trick in the book (at least the book I have)  and ended up drilling  a hole at the corner so I could run a snake down to inside the cabin, pull the wire up, then snake from the new hole to the opening by the nav. light to finish the run.  I'll plug the new hole with a plastic cap so it's accessible if I ever need to replace wiring.

The horn looks good, mounted very easily, and is out of the way.  The holes on the horn bracket don't line up perfect to the bracket on the bow pulpit but it's darn close.  All it took was opening up the mounting holes on the horn bracket 1/32" to fit 10-32 hardware through the existing light bracket mounts.  I had to drill out the top mounting holes in the light back plate to accommodate the new hardware but that was nothing.  I used nylock nuts inside the light to prevent future loosening. 

It's not super loud, but loud enough.  I messed around with position of the horn and found pointing it down produced the best sound in front and to the sides, and it made install much easier and cleaner. 

A switch installed next to the bilge pump door in the cockpit operates the horn.   I ran main power to the switch off the bottom of the + switch panel feed, and through an inline fuse so it's powered at all times.   I could have gone right off the battery but this ended up much cleaner.  I terminated the negative wire with the others behind the switch panel.  This will allow easy installation of another parallel switch inside the cabin if I ever decide that would be worth having.

Beep beep,
Scott