One of the weakest things on a motorcycle is it’s horn. Any motorcycle.
I picked up a Denali SoundBomb that was brand new in the box on ADV Rider the other day for cheap. It’s supposed to blast out at 120 decibels. That’s 4 times louder than a stock horn!
Having some free time on Memorial Weekend I thought I’d just pop the sucker in. The first issue came up when I started looking for a place to mount it.
My first thought was to tuck it under the headlight. After removing both side fairings, I found out that it wasn’t going to fit. You can see that the piece of trim under the headlight just doesn’t allow for enough room.
Sorry for the poor photography. All of these were taken on my cell and on many of these shots I was using one hand to hold parts in place.
Denali SoundBomb location idea
There’s also very limited space vertically with a high fender and you have to remember that the headlight is stationary while the fender rotates with the forks. You can’t have anything dragging on your steering.
So I went back to ADV and asked for help. That’s the beauty of forums. There’s usually someone somewhere who has had the same problem and has an answer. A few hours later, I had an answer. A short one, but an answer none the less.
Well, at least that gave me a direction to go in. With the side fairings already off I decided the best side might be the left – only because it would be closer to the usually occurring traffic side.
Putting the Denali SoundBomb behind the black panel
There’s not much room in there…
But size wise it looks like it might just fit.
Just getting a ballpark on the proposed location
I had to grind off a piece from the inside of the black plastic that wasn’t used for anything (at least on my model). Once it was off there was a little more room.
I did a quick test fit and realized this wasn’t going to work. There’s just not enough room in there for everything as it is. There’s a mounting bracket that’s part of the cast body. In this configuration, that part of the unit would hit and grind a hole in my orange body work.
There’s a mounting bracket problem
That would be easily solved with a little angle grinder action…
Ground off the mounting bracket
Now it fits nicely!
So I zipped tied it in with a couple of quality zip ties and then wired the unit for power.
Once wired, I screwed the panel back on to the side fairing and went to work on the relay.
Here’s the wiring diagram they provided.
I decided to put the relay in the same place as the original horn. It’s got an inline 30 amp fuse running to it like the instructions said.
The finished product is perfectly hidden. The horn is plenty loud enough.
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, had a big cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and is currently building a perfect "BDR Weapon"). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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