Stebel Nautilus Air Horn Install - 5th Gen VFR

I had a Stebel Nautilus compact air horn on my previous bike and was very impressed by how loud it was, while being fairly compact. After installing my Blue Sea fuse panel under my seat, it was time to install the Stebel.

I did a lot of online research, and then spent about an hour scoping out my bike, and could not come up with a good location to mount the horn. There just is not much space under the skin of the VFR.

The horn is made up of a compressor and a horn, and they can be separated fairly easily. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of this process, but it obvious where the tab is that holds them together. I just snapped them apart, and was left with two much less bulky components to find room for.

It would be wise to carefully remove your body panels before getting started. I had removed everything from my bike since I was doing some other mods over the same weekend, but you could get away with only the right and left panels, along with the inner part of the dash.

My plan at this point was to find mounting space for each component, and then connect the compressor to the horn using plastic tubing.

The plastic horn component has a circular section that wraps around the compressor, so I cut that off with a hacksaw. It cut extremely easily - I was through in just a few strokes of the saw. I now had a much more compact horn section.


To connect the plastic tubing I picked up a barbed brass tubing fitting to be epoxied in the air inlet hole of the horn.


I mixed up some 5 minute epoxy, smeared it over one end of the fitting, and set it in the hole (it was a fairly tight fit). Once cured, I slipped on the tubing an used a hose clamp to be sure it was really on there.


The left side of the fairing, in front of the left radiator, had just enough room for the horn. I used some good quality Velcro and zip ties to install the horn to the inner fairing. The horn weighs almost nothing and I am sure it will hold up.



For the compressor, I found space on the right side of the fairing - also in front of the radiator. There is a hole in the inner fairing for a clip that holds the wires to the air temp sensor.


I removed the clip, and used a machine screw, a washer, and a nut to secure a hose clamp that will wrap around the compressor. To prevent rattling, I used more of the high quality Velcro that I bought.




Now that the horn and the compressor were installed, I ran the tubing from the horn through the front cowl and connected it to the compressor.


For the electrical portion of the installation, you need to use a relay - the OEM horn wires are not big enough to handle the power that the compressor draws. I simply connected the stock horn connectors to the relay, ran a wire to the positive terminal of the horn, and another wire to my auxiliary fuse panel. If you are not familiar with electronics, it can sound confusing but it's really not too bad if you read up on how relays work.

I secured the relay to a bundle of wiring up in the front cowl.


To ground the compressor, you could just run a wire from the negative terminal to any ground on the bike. I chose to run a ground wire to my auxiliary fuse panel.


The horn is now installed. I switched on the ignition and pressed the horn button, and was greeted with a sickly blowing sound. Oops.... I had the positive and negative connections on the compressor reversed! After swapping them, I tried again and was pleased to hear all 130 DB of dual tone Stebel sound.

This installation took quite a while but I am happy with the results. I am really happy that I did not have to modify the bike at all by drilling or cutting anything on it. I removed the OEM horn, and removed the one clip for the thermometer wire, and that was all. The horn is MUCH louder than stock, and has a very unique sound to it as well.

 

EXCELLENT write up...I am looking for a more "commanding" horn to wake all the idiots up on my ride home in the afternoons...Anyway of posting a sound clip of that horn?
I found MANY sound clips on YouTube, disregard....lol

 

Very nice write up and great pics. Just wanted to add that if someone doesn't want to separate the unit into two parts, I was able to mount the entire unit perfectly vertically under the right side fairing of my '98 with no problem at all, and it works great.

 

Do you have any pictures of how you mounted it? I would have preferred to keep the horn in one unit but I just could not find room (although I was mainly looking towards the front of the bike).....

 

Glad you found some clips of it, as I'm unable to download from my camcorder to my computer at the moment.