2008 Toyota Tundra CrewMax Pickup Project Air Horns I've had these air horns for some years now, with the intent of installing them on every previous truck I owned. Now with the Tundra, it's finally a truck BIG enough to legitimately warrant a set of real horns! The horns measure 15" and 18" in length, with a 6" wide bell. I ultimately used 3 pumps, 2 on the larger horn on the passenger side, and a single pump on the shorter horn on the driver side. JUICE: I initially tried to piggy-back power from the fuse box, but found that the horn fuse is actually a constant-on power-source - the relay is apparently somewhere AFTER the fuse box that connects the steering wheel horn button to the actual horns. So "Plan B" involved tapping straight from the horn itself. I used a small gauge wire that is tapped directly from the driver side horn, snaked it back up thru the wire loom and up to the relay I mounted up on the plastic trim over the ABS pump assembly. Primary (switched) power for the pumps comes direct from the battery via 10-gauge cable and currently a 50-amp fuse. After the relay the cable splits off to feed the single driver-side pump, then goes up behind the soft panel along the top of the firewall, over to where it splits to feed the 2 pumps on the passenger side. The pumps are wired in parallel. BLOW: Ironically, strangely, mysteriously, and thankfully there are several threaded studs mounted on the firewall that have nothing attached to them. Not sure what they are for other than perhaps for options that are not on my SR5 2WD truck. Dunno. But those little studs were the lifesaver of this project as I used them to easily mount the pumps. I have a plethora of surplus's "stuff" accumulated over time. I used 4 steel 90-degree brackets I had to custom make a couple brackets to hold the pumps. As you can see in the pictures, placement and fitting works out perfectly as they are stashed back out of the way and interfere with nothing. :-) HONK! Initial ideas were to mount the horns in front of the radiator and condenser in that vacuous space where the little stock horns are hangin out. But I really preferred them to be under the hood (as are horns I have mounted on my Stealth). I thought about putting both on the drivers side as there is plenty of room, but for logistical purposes of mounting the pumps (I found the studs on the firewall!) and to balance out the aesthetics of the installation, I opted to put one on each side of the hood. Each horn is mounted to a 28" x 2" piece of aluminum. The front of the aluminum strip is attached using the bolt that holds the front grill to the hood (well, longer bolts, and there are plenty of other bolts holding the grill - it's not going anywhere!). For the back connections I had to drill a 1" hole in the hood right at the bend (see pics) in order to be able to get the bolt thru the smaller hole I drilled for the bolt. Holes were of course drilled in the aluminum strip to allow for the air hose connection and mounting bolts. The spacing works perfectly as the horns clear everything under the hood with no points of contact. And since they are wired in with the stock horns, there's no special extra button to push for them. A quick blip of the steering wheel still yields a quick stock honk, but give a half second or more press and the air horns rev up and let loose!!! SOURCES: The horns were from Ebay years ago. The single pump was bought separately. The pair of pumps are Harbor Freight specials... came with the little cheapo red plastic squeakers, but all I wanted was the pumps, and when they had them on sale for $10 a set, I used my coupons and grabbed a couple. :) RESULTS: Overall VERY happy with the results. They have a great sound, big-rig / train-like. I'll get some video/audio here soon. |
