Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Stebel Nautilus Compact horn on Yamaha FJR1300

Having gone through a few dangerous situations on the [crazy] roads of Moscow, I realized that I need a louder horn. I mean a really loud one.

A quick search on the Internet revealed a few candidates, so I ordered the most compact one - Stebel Nautilus Compact. This is an air horn meaning it has a high-pressure air compressor blowing into two acoustic chambers. The horn came with an angular mounting bolt as an extra option.

I would prefer my horn not to be easily visible from outside, as I value  and wish to preserve the natural beauty of Yamaha FJR1300 design. It is also a questionable topic if local traffic regulations allow for stock horns modification.

So I removed upper cowling panels (A, B, C, D) of my Gen I FJR and found a cozy spare space featuring a mounting hole (follow red arrow) under panels A&B:


(you can also see Nautilus's relay already mounted with stock bolt on the photo above).

I picked a 240x80x1mm sheet of steel at a local hardware store then cut/bent a custom mounting bracket from it. You can see it from different angles:


Bracket  mounted on bike, red arrow points to the mounting bolt:


Nautilus horn bolted to bracket, front cowling removed for clarity (it's not really necessary):


View from the rear:


Close-up view from above with cowling and A panel back on bike:


Update: about 50K km and two years later, my Nautilus developed an issue -- its axle bearings went loose what caused rotor to stick. I suspect it may be due to  its horizontal mounted -- something what is not recommended by the manufacturer, or a considerable amount of dirt collected along horn's inlet air opening and ultimately sucked into the bearings.

So I replaced broken Nautilus Compact with a new one. As a preventive measure I've also glued some thin fabric to cover horn's air inlet.

Update: I've come across a Chinese-made Nautilus Compact which is twice as cheap as the original. Not sure about its endurance, though.

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