I'm tired of the idiots and my factory horn is wimpy. When I honk someone I want it to be an event they remember.

Any ideas?

-Dylan

hahaha. I've been dreaming about this for years. I've always wanted to hit up a junk yard and take an airhorn off of an 18-wheeler cab or something like that and mount it under the hood... complete with pull chain activation. How great would that be?

When I honk someone I want it to be an event they remember.

*wipes the theoretical pepsi-I-wish-I-had off the screen*

I'll have to remember to have something around to spew next time.

I've always wanted to hit up a junk yard and take an airhorn off of an 18-wheeler cab or something like that and mount it under the hood...

I think Loren needs the new, stretch WRX Eldorado (coming early 2004). Hard time finding a place for air horns in the current model. Don't know what kind of wheels Dylan is struggling with, but I upgraded the factory horns with Hella Supertones (visible, repainted blue by me, in the attachment) from rallylights.com. They are a definite improvement. Very directional, so need to be mounted pointed forward with minimal obstruction for best effect. I have thought of adding a small set of Fiamm air horns on a cut-out switch for country use, but can't figure where to stick the horns so that they are not obstructed (hmmm, maybe on a custom bracket over by the DRL relay and alarm horn....)

In High School I used the PA on my CB to tell people exactly how I felt about them. Much more personal than a horn... but I think it may actually be illegal.

If you've got room for a compressor...

Hadley air horns
Grover air horns
JC Whitney carries all kinds of kits
Most of these will scare the bejeezus out of people. I'm still trying to figure out which one I want. I'm thinking of getting a train horn around 133 dB...

the Hadley horn is insane. you can get them at RV shops.
DO NOT test it in a small space.

I've heard maintenance problems about air horns, so you might want to check out electric ones. Wolo makes both, and here's their electrics page.

I saw this the other day. I definitely think I must get one. Program it to say my road rage catch phrase of "F*** you, a**hole"

When I honk someone I want it to be an event they remember

Ha ha. I feel the same way many a time. Watching a pedestrian cross the road, after he's seen you coming down the road at 100 kmph with your horn blaring, makes you wish you had a loud enough horn to blast the ear drums out of that fvcker!

But then again, I drive in India, where people don't take out their cars if the horn is broken. I honk so much that my thumb has made an impression on my steering.

~Yogi.

I think I'd program mine to say ``Turn off your brights, asshole!''

Tangentially, do any states actually enforce having your headlights point in the correct direction?

Kind of like the big rig I noticed one day that had "SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT" mirrored on the front grill in lights... I bet some people still don't do it though when he's bearing down on their ass...
I noticed in Texas there are people that insist on doing 55 mph in the fast lane, even though there is a law now that says you must keep right except to pass (not get passed on the right!!!)

Every time I migrate back up to northern VA, I must spend about half my trip on a 2-lane 65 mph road. I have this theory that there's a conspiracy that involves two people going out and deciding they will both go exactly 60mph RIGHT NEXT TO EACH-OTHER. No matter how much I do, I have never gotten a person who is going too slow in the passing lane to actually get over. I'm convinced that these days people do it on purpose.

Anyway, a friend of mine in high school had what the reverend had. He also said it was illegal, but that didn't stop him from using it. Then again, he also used to heckle truck drivers

He also had sounds on his horn. He never even joked about plying the police siren on the road

As a further tangent, does anyone else HATE the new headlights that are starting to show up on these high-end cars? They have a blue tinge to them, and they supposedly give the driver a much better view of the road. At the expense of everyone else. I don't know if they're technically brighter in terms of candle power or whatever, but the damn things blind the hell out of me, even more than conventional high beams do. Are these things going to be showing up on more and more cars?

I absolutely hate them. I don't know who decided that brighter was better. It feels like lawmakers not wanting to raise taxes in order to erect street lights.

I don't really mind the new color in and of itself. What I do hate though, and this seems to have improved on more recent models, is the fact that the color of the lamp is different depending on what angle you view it from. It's white straight forward, becomes more blue as you get towards the sides, and then by the very edge of the cone, is quite purple. I get these transistions all the time as I pass cars going the opposite direction, and it's really distracting.

I used to have an actual police siren in my mustang. They can be bought for next to nothing at city auctions. I just bolted it under my car beside one of the wheel wells. Worked like a champ. In my truck, I went to a junkyard and bought 5 different electric horns for $2 a piece, and hooked 'em all up in parallel. When I hit that horn, I had 5 different tones all shrieking at once. Sounded like a friggin train!

Ahh... I miss my old police siren. I lost it when I hit a pothole and the speaker caught the lip of the pothole. The whole thing just went bouncing down the road. Oh well.

In college, all my friends and I had CB's with PA's attached. We'd set my CB to use the loudspeaker, tune to an odd channel, park in the mall parking lot, drive in his car across the parking lot and mess with people coming out of the building. Also fun is using a scanner to intercept the McDonalds Drive-In feed and broadcast THAT over the PA. People get real upset when they hear themselves coming from a loudspeaker somewhere. Ahh.... the good ol' days.

Hmm, a police siren is a great idea, until an actual cop is within earshot...

Kind of like the big rig I noticed one day that had "SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT" mirrored on the front grill in lights...

I used to have this as a window decal on the top edge of my windshield in my GTI. In reverse, of course, so people could read it in their rear-view mirrors.

Didn't help.

Sounds like it's time to buy a BB gun. Yes. I hate them too.

As a further tangent, does anyone else HATE the new headlights that are starting to show up on these high-end cars?

I haven't been bothered by those HID lights in oncoming cars where they come factory-installed (so far as I could tell....Audis and such where HID is a common option). I have been somewhat unenthused by HID-equipped SUVs in my rear-view mirrors.

The big-problem, IMO, is aftermarket installs. Some of these just add HID lights (and the required ballast hardware) to stock light housings, so the lateral distribution *meant* for stock, wimpy bulbs is given to more powerful HID bulbs.

Worst, and really bad, is folks taking headlamp kits from RHD markets and popping them in the equivalent LHD cars. This is popular with WRXs where "JDM" (Japanese domestic market) headlamp kits are available. This essentailly means throwing *more* light across the centerline at oncoming traffic. Not DOT-legal and bustable, but doubt many folks get the tickets they should for this. If you encountered a *really* bad set of headlamps, it could have been one of these.

does anyone else HATE the new headlights that are starting to show up on these high-end cars?

It sounds like you are talking about Xenon headlights, but those started to appear years ago. Is there a new and even brigther headlight technology out there I didn't hear about?

Where I live we have trams. Big, heavy, hard to stop, track-bound items to generally keep away from Anyway, they have a quite distinctive bell/ringer that really cuts through traffic noise. Trams being what they are, people are pretty much conditioned to reacting to them - even if there's no tram or tramline right there. A friend of mine had one of those bells in his car - very effective... Worked even on pedestrians, who otherwise tend to totally ignore cars/car horns.

/Michael

It sounds like you are talking about Xenon headlights, but those started to appear years ago. Is there a new and even brigther headlight technology out there I didn't hear about?

Same thing, I think, Xenon HID. If there was any pre-HID Xenon bulb type (there are fake Xenon blue bulbs, but that doesn't count) I'm not aware of it. I think it's just that there are many more of them now, some of them very poorly fitted.

Oh, a HID link and links from howstuffworks.com.

Oh, and what am I doing in the horn thread??? Actually using your horn in Seattle is punishable by death, hissing, or both.....I think I have only used my new horns twice....but it is nice to have ones that really work.

Actually using your horn in Seattle is punishable by death, hissing, or both.....

You don't need a horn in Texas. That's why they make gun racks!

Just to clarify what we're talking about here, what are the purple-ish colored headlights I usually see? I absolutely HATE those.

This essentailly means throwing *more* light across the centerline at oncoming traffic.

You're saying these people install replacement headlights into their cars and then don't bother to aim them properly? I thought all headlights had aiming adjustment screws.

I was at a car show in arkansas last weekend and a guy actually had a train horn in the bed of his s10 that was bagged. It was incredibly loud, but incredibly annoying after the first time he blew it

Just to clarify what we're talking about here, what are the purple-ish colored headlights I usually see? I absolutely HATE those.

Blue, purple-bluish, sure. Xenon HIDs.

Now, what everybody needs is like four of these on a bar on the front bumper to put those folks in Texas off their aim!

...some of them very poorly fitted.

The Xenon bulb+stock light housing argument in your previous post was an aha experience, it coincides with my street observations. Thanks.

You're saying these people install replacement headlights into their cars and then don't bother to aim them properly?

No, what I am saying is that the headlamp modules, whether reflective or projector types, are (or can be) different between RHD and LHD cars of the same model -- different part numbers. Each are biased to skew more light to their respective shoulders. So, the JDM lamp units are biased to the left, not good in LHD countries where any bias should go the right. Anyhow, I'm not certain that this is the case with all lights, but it is certainly the case with some that I am aware of such as these cheaper (JDM) WRX projector units (where if the person spent a little more time and money they could get the equivalent Euro EDM part with correct LHD bias).

Make sense?

edit: Oh I have to add a rant:
1) Guy adds higher power bulbs to stock fog lamps.
2) Guy sits in traffic on warm sunny days with fog lamps turned on to show the world he has cool fog lamps.
3) Guy then posts to ____.net car forum bitching about how his cheap, no-good OE fog lamp harness connectors melted!

Another edit: Allowable beam patterns in the U.S. are determined by the DOT and US-market headlamps typically have "DOT" somewhere on them so that a cop can check to see if you are legal. Out-of-US lamps whether JDM or EDM may not conform to DOT, so you could theoretically get cited for either, but I would guess that the JDM/RHD would be easier to notice. Aftermarket kits sold in stores here will say DOT-approved, but sometimes I wonder as I wonder about the units showing up on eBay.