Air horns- Legalities

[Alice cupra]

Apologies if this has been discussed before (Searched and couldn't find anything)

I know that legally, a car has to have a horn or "audible warning device" fitted and will fail an MOT without one, and that they can't be alternating two-tone, like emergency vehicles used to be, or musical.

But, is there an "upper limit" of what is legal and would pass an MOT?

Came across a site for a company which make ferry and train horns (and contains videos of them using ones fitted to a car): www.hornblasters.com

How legal would / wouldn't this be if I were to fit one to my car?

[Prof Beard]

The regs say a horn must be " continuous, uniform and not strident " on a vehicle "first used on or after 1.8.1973"

[Fiskkeeper]

mate used to have a truck airhorn that needed two 12v compressors to run it on a landy. sounded like a fishing boat coming into dock. that passed the MOT fine. wish he'd told me when he was selling the LR i wanted that horn for mine.

[Blue Tomcat]

I wired a pair of good old Maserati air-horns into my old BGT as the factory ones were about as good as a fly farting.
I spliced the compressor relay into the horn circuit so that a quick dab on the button gave a pathetic 'meep' and a longer prod gave you that full 'Stelvio Pass' howl from the Mazzers. Passed the last three MOT's quite happily...

[streaky]

Ditto on the Tiv - Streaky

[FortJefferson]

Prof Beard said:

The regs say a horn must be " continuous, uniform and not strident " on a vehicle "first used on or after 1.8.1973"

Not "stident" says it all, not to loud and striking. So watch it if you fit one!!!

[turbobloke]

FortJefferson said:

Prof Beard said:

The regs say a horn must be " continuous, uniform and not strident " on a vehicle "first used on or after 1.8.1973"

Not "stident" says it all, not to loud and striking. So watch it if you fit one!!!

Agreed but shirley it would be easy to fit a toggle switch out of sight but accessible to the owner. One setting meep meep, the other armageddon

[tigerbear]

The horn on one of our ambulances packed up a while ago but it still passed the MOT on the basis it had the Bull horn built in to the siren speakers. So if a horn was needed all the driver had to do was hit the red button on the dash.

funnily enough people bloody moved when they heard it

Edited by tigerbear on Sunday 10th September 09:49

[Alice Cupra]

turbobloke said:

shirley it would be easy to fit a toggle switch out of sight but accessible to the owner. One setting meep meep, the other armageddon

Now that sounds like an idea.

Hopefully there's room in the engine bay for one, as the ol' 1.8T is shoehorned in already.....

[711]

Overly loud horns can be a double edged sword sometimes. My first car was an old Rover that the previous owner had fitted an air horn to. I once tried to give a cyclist a quick toot to warn of my prescence and ended up scaring the poor sod so badly he wobbled into an even more dangerous position.

Could end up a bit like loud cans on bikes - they sound great, but tend to whip the anti-bike brigade up into a bikers-are-evil lynch mob. Sometimes, it's best not to attract too much attention

[davidra]

Sounds like 2 horns is the way to go.

I find on most factory horns very light pressure yields a polite *meep* (translation: "Lights have changed, stop sending your txt message and move off please" whereas a long and loud beeeeeep results from severe application ("are you aware that you just violated right of way and are causing me to take evasive action". It is very useful to have both options.

I think my next car will have air horns for type 2 beeps.

dave

[AJLintern]

Just fitted these to my Spitfire...



Rather better than the weedy single tone horn it had before!

[anonymous-user]

I've got those on my Tiger, although I wished I hadn't when I was bent over working on the engine and someone leant on the horn....ARGH

[ChristianZS]

Those videos are brilliant..

Im still tempted to get a set fitted on my little fiesta

Cause rather a stir i should imagine

C.

[tonyvid]

Has anyone tried the new type of compact airhorns, an all in one unit? I saw them in Halfrauds the other day as I am looking for something for the TF which only has a crappy single instead of the rather fine pair that Fs used to have.

[combemarshal]

My Xantia has air horns as standard (but I think it's only the top of the range models, my old TD had normal horns) and they are quite compact, may be worth a trip to the breakers (not that I can ever find any there!)