Saturday, March 10, 2007

This!... is what I call a car horn.

After reading a couple of "what's the loudest horn for my car" discussion threads lately, I was inspired to do a quick blog of a friend's ancient Toyota Crown. I believe this car is equipped with the LOUDEST & BIGGEST damn car horn in Malaysia, and some say Singapore.

Firstly, let me introduce you to the junk... errr... car in question. It's a rusty, old JDM (Japan Domestic Market) Toyota Crown which sports wheels (Volks Racing multispokes 15" - 6.5JJ front, 7JJ rear) are probably worth twice as much as the rest of the car.

It's mostly stock except for an extra piece of kit to the right of the engine.

Here's a closeup of what I mean. It's a Kitahara Texas airhorn, probably salvaged from the cab of an old Japanese multi-axle, articulated trailer lorry.

The front part of the air horn goes into the firewall because it's too long to fit entirely in the engine bay!

The rest of the horn is actually inside the passenger cabin, underneath the dashboard. The whole hog is roughly more than 3 feet in all.

The airhorn is plumbed to a pressurised air tank located in the front passenger footwell and powered by an air compressor under the front passenger seat. I have no idea where the air compressor was salvaged from...

... but it's enough to pressurise the system to 6 bar (~85 psi as shown on an industrial pressure gauge). With better hoses and hose clips, the pressure should be about 7 bar (~100psi), as that's the air compressor's rating.

And lastly, here's how it sounds on youtube video. One clip was recorded using a SonyEricsson K800i and the other clip using a Samsung D500C.