F40 Air Horn Upgrade Photos and Sounds

I remember the first time I drove the demo 360 that arrived at the local dealer years ago. I was driving, and the owner of the dealership was in the passenger seat. Not far from the dealership, I honked the horn.

BEEP BEEP! (insert Honda horn sound here....)

Huh? That's not what a Ferrari horn is supposed to sound like! That's certainly not what any of my other ones sound like! The dealer was surprised, too - he hadn't heard the horn yet, either!

Fast forward to last month, when I finally acquired an F40 after many years of searching for the right one. I take it for its maiden voyage, and honk the horn on the way out of the driveway.

BEEP BEEP (flash back to Honda sound here...)

WHAAAAATTTTT? An uber-Ferrari with an electric horn? PLEASE!!! NOOOOO!!!!!!

So today, Dave Handa was nice enough to come by on short notice and spend 30 minutes with me upgrading the horn to an Italian two note air horn. I know others have done it with their 360s, but here's how it goes with an F40.

The F40 has two electric FIAMM horns, both mounted to brackets riveted inside the front bumper, one on each side of the radiator intake.

I purchased an Italian-made Stebel (http://www.stebel.it/) GP2 two-horn kit from my local Shucks auto parts store for $28, based on the sound file on the Sebel web site (go check it out - pretty cool!). If I had been more patient, I could have purchased a FIAMM from ebay for $22 including shipping, but I like the major chord of the Sebel slightly better than the dissonant chord of the FIAMM.

Dave and I removed both old electric horns and their bolts and washers, then connected the + and - spade connectors that ran to the driver's side to the compressor, which we mounted to a hole in the top of the bracket with a nut and bolt supplied in the horn kit.

We then mounted the larger to the side of the bracket where the previous horn was mounted using a nut and bolt supplied in the horn kit. We mounted the shorter horn to the bracket on the passenger side using a nut and bolt supplied in the horn kit, and zip-tied the unused spade connecters on that side to an adjacent wire run to keep it out of the way.

No splices, taps, clipped wires, or additional relays or fuses were needed (the F40 already has a 15A fuse and a relay running to the horns). Stock setup can be restored in less than 5 minutes (but why would you WANT to?)

Because of the completeness of the kit (which included a relay we didn't need) the only part from needed the hardware store was a few feet of 15 cent per foot plastic tubing since we were mounting the horns farther apart than the supplied tubing would allow. Plus, it was a good excuse to go for a drive.

Here's how the horn USED to sound:

http://ferrari.stevejenkins.com/downloads/f40_horn_before.wav

Here's how it sounds now:

http://ferrari.stevejenkins.com/downloads/f40_horn_after.wav

Attached below are photos of the driver's side and passenger installs, and a candid shot Dave took of me driving the F40 to the hardware store as I'm about to pick my nose (well that's what I thought the shot looked like....). The last thing left to do now is wire-tie the tubing out of the way to the bottom of the mesh in the front bumper (won't be visible from the front).

Thanks to my good buddy Dave Handa for a fun (albeit quick) afternoon DIY project!

 

I took some when the car was delivered:

http://ferrari.stevejenkins.com/f40_deliv.html

 

Wah Wah Waaaaaaaaaaah

 

It's a fun 20 minute DIY project. I just finished wire-tying the air tube so it's totally hidden from view now.

360 owners - you want either the FIAMM Riviera kit, or the Stebel GP2 (Grand Prix 2) kit. Both are Italian-made (FIAMM is the OEM for Ferrari - including the electric ones, but I prefer the Stebel note), and one of the two should be at your local part store. Mine was at Shucks (same as Krager, CKS Auto, etc.).