idriveals4

I had this old nautilus compact horn left over from my old miata. Figured I'd give it a try in the 96 LS. My previous bmw had very manly horns and the LS, while better then most imports of the time, needed a little help.

The horn was orginally this

http://www.thompson-automotive.com/Air_Horn.html

But once I moved the bracket around and fabbed up an extension for the 12v+ voila! Used in place of one of the factory horns. I'm not sure it raised the manly factor too much so I'll probably source out another BMW horn to replace the other one. Unless my wife gives me permission for train horns

Unfortunatly testing it out woke up the kids from thier nap, so no more playing in the garage for me today.

A few pics from today.













and video

http://s967.photobucket.com/albums/a...008_152208.mp4


I didnt change out the fuse and will frankly just see if there are any problems. I don't get on the horn too much, but will see when I get the bmw horn if I need to upgrade wiring or the such.

idriveals4

ok, yea, you'll need to replace the 10 amp fuse on this one. turns out it blew the fuse after the video. Popped a 20 amp in there and works like a charm. If the 20 amp goes, I'll wire up a relay. No need to melt factory wiring right???

idriveals4

And for those people that like details, I did have to drill out the bracket to allow 12mm bolt to fit though to mount in the factory hole. I also used 18 cable to make the extension to connect the factory plug to the horn. Simply used a spade and female recepticle attached to the wire to make the connections. Used electrical tape to "seal" the connections. I'll check up on it ever few months to make sure the tape is still holding.

Kansas

If you decide to use a relay, the arrow in the attached photo points to a convenient "hot" terminal by the underhood fuse box on my 00 LS -- maybe your 96 LS is the same. I currently have my trailer lights powered by this terminal but I'll power the two extra 90 LS horns I recently added via a relay if I blow a fuse or they get sounding wimpy. Here's my recent thread on my extra horns if you missed it: https://www.clublexus.com/forums/ls4...000-ls400.html

I'll bet you've got room to mount your other LS horn near your Nautilus horn but you'd better use a relay if you do.

Speaking of BMW, an speeding X5 came out of nowhere this morning as I was changing lanes (into his lane) on a downtown Kansas City street. I'm sure glad he sounded his horn but I was surprised it was so wimpy - maybe it wasn't working properly.

Here's a Youtube for experiencing the sound of a Nautilus horn. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtcZjli4jxQ