Hella Sharptone DIY- Relay free, splice free, and no drilling!

I figured after I spent the time and effort figuring out a nice, integrated setup for a horn upgrade, I might as well do a little DIY/Write-up for TacomaWorld, in case other people want to do the same! It's quite easy- as long as you can use a crimp connector you can make this harness yourself. It doesn't require any modifications to your truck!

Before I start, let me make this 100% clear- this is for Hella SHARPtones not Hella SUPERtones. SUPERtones are the older variant that draws a lot more current and has a high pitched "euro beep" that a lot of people don't like as much for a truck. Hella SHARPtones are more efficient power wise, and are a lower, more "truck-like" horn.

Now that that's our of the way, first off is mounting the horns. It's quite easy to get at them, as they are right behind the grille. SR5 and higher trim owners, you'll find that there are 2 horns. Lowly SR fellows, there is only one for us. It doesn't matter though, as there are 2 threaded holes there just waiting to mount up your sweet new horns.

The passenger's side one is slightly smaller- use an M6 bolt that's 16mm long for that one. Driver's side, you can reuse your Toyota brand bolt or dig out a shiny new M8-1.25 pitch bolt, also 16mm long.

In they go:

For the picture I took the grille off, but you can do this whole job without taking it off!

Now, make up a very simple wiring harness for them. Since I have an SR, I need to make a doubler for the positive wire, and then a ground strap for them.

Here are my materials:

Pretty simple. 18 gauge wires, one ring terminal, one male spade terminal, and 4 weatherproof female spades. Heat shrink and fancy sleeving is totally optional. I'm a huge nerd. Remember to measure your lengths! I probably made some of my wires on the short side, but I didn't want there to be gobs extra to contend with.

Here's my positive wire doubling harness:

As you can see it's quite simple. I just have 2 wires mated to the male spade, going out to their respective weatherproof female spades.

Then comes my ground strap:

It's also very simple. 2 Wires, mated to that ring terminal, going out to 2 weatherproof female spades. I went a little wild here with my fancy heat shrink and cable sleeve. You really don't need to do this if you don't want to!

The ground strap uses the ring terminal to sit directly on the ground that's right next to the negative terminal of the battery:


String that bad boy across your engine bay neatly, out in front of the radiator. Took me only 3 zip ties to get it nice and secure:


Then, push the female terminals of your ground strap onto the male spades on the horns, 1 each. Side doesn't matter, these are non-polar. As long as you have 1 positive wire and 1 ground on each, they will work just fine. Then take that positive wire doubling harness you made, and push the male terminal into the stock horn's original wire. Get those remaining connectors onto the horn terminals, and you're done!

I went the extra mile and camouflaged the wires with some of that plastic tubing to make it look stock.

Yup, that's it! Beep the horn just to make sure, but that's all there is to it. Probably took me about as much time to write this up as it took to do it.

SR5+ OWNERS: You will only need to make an extender for one of the passenger's side horn connectors. Just push the closer stock connector onto the closer one, and then make a 1 male spade to 1 female terminal wire extender to reach out to that other horn.

==== Nerd Content Below ====

-Wait a Second, Hella says you need to use a relay!
Yes indeed, Hella includes a relay for you to use and gives you very nice instructions on how to use it. However, for a modern car like a 3rd Gen Tacoma it's entirely optional. Your factory horn already has a relay rated at 20A, and is fused at 10A. These horns draw 7A. That's plenty of safety margin. The older, more traditional Supertones do draw 12A, so that does require more engineering.

-Why didn't you just ground the horns to the chassis?
I freely admit that my large ground strap is not necessary for functioning horns. I'm coming from the Subaru enthusiast community, and I've found that at least with those, the chassis kinda sucks for grounding in in some cases. It'll work, but it won't work as well as it could. Many users reported that after "the grounding mod" their horns were suddenly much louder. I figured why not just go for it, it gave me an excuse to use some neat cable sleeve.

-How are your horns white? Didja paint them?
Nope, I bought them from Subimods. https://subimods.com/hella-sharptone-horns-h31000001.html and paid a small extra fee for powder coating. Other places like Subispeed and other Subaru tuning places sell these, the horns are a big thing in the Subaru community.

 

Thanks for the write-up. Pic of the front with everything put back together and the hood down,?

 

Snapped a pic through the grille last night:

They're reasonably stealth behind an SR grille.

 

Got a sound clip video?

 

Sound clip of supertones vs sharptones at the end of the video.

 

To each his own but why? Serious question. I have a 2013 wrx and see these installed at the meets.. They are a cool accessory but relatively unseen and unheard.


How often are you honking your horn?

I guess living in my area, the horn is the last resort when pissed off. Not a normal usage item.

Edit: i cant word this without sounding like a dick/troll.. Not meant to come off that way.

 

How are you liking the difference? I've got an SR and I live in a part of the country with really terrible drivers. I regularly honk. This SR horn ain't cutting it.

 

No offense taken. I understand your meaning just fine- I'm not one of those compulsive beepers who honks at even the slightest provocation.
More often than not, I'm beeping at wildlife rather than people. Squirrels, birds (sometimes turkeys and quail, believe it or not!), deer, cats, rabbits, the lot. All tend to reconsider their current location in the road with a little bit of "acoustic encouragement" , and Hellas tend to carry their sound much further than standard horns. I don't lean on the horn, just give a quick beep or two to startle them. At least in my experience, beep at them and they get out of the road- startle them by "sneaking up on them" with a truck, and you're way more likely to get erratic panic behavior like a squirrel darting back and forth.
Also unless you beep, quail just literally can't give less of a fuck about your presence.

When it comes to people, I tend to think of it as a good medium step between the stock horn and something industrial grade like a train horn. You're not trying to be a dickhead and give them tinnitus, just a nice sharp "hey what the fuck!!" that cuts through loud radios, texting, and general lack of awareness.

It's a really nice upgrade from stock. My friend has an iPad with that "dB meter" app and we tried a head to head comparison but the little consumer grade mic for it just got saturated at a reading of 118dB for both horns, which is clearly wrong.

The stock horn is 108dB, these horns are 115dB. That's a 7dB difference. A 10dB difference is perceived by the human ear as double the loudness. So yeah, remarkably louder.

 

Looks great. Thanks for making me spending my ~ $40

 

did u guys paint them white, I thought they came in yellow or red (depending on super or sharp tone)

 

http://www.subispeed.com/hella-sharp-tone-horn-kit#.V0YAcuRM7hU

Subispeed has them in many different colors for $10 more.

 

Probably should have mentioned where I got them, @Camel89 ! Will edit my OP.

 

Dude this is awesome! I was just searching the net for info on Hella horns. Guess I should have checked home base first! Tacomaworld is so great. I think I just killed my stock horn by driving through some huge puddles, it's upgrading time!

 

Just did mine this morning! I followed the OP's basic layout but I didn't have any male blade connectors, so I cut off the factory plug and used a butt connector to the two hot wires. The two grounds go to the battery ground in the inner fender. I painted mine red but they are just barely visible behind the grille.



Thanks for the write up Nitori! These horns are hella cool!

 

If you don't mind the color or you can always paint them, but I found them on Amazon for Hella cheap, ha

$21 HELLA H31000001 Sharptone 12V High Tone / Low Tone Twin Horn Kit with Yellow Protective Grill, Includes Relay, 2 Horns

https://www.amazon.com/H31000001-Un...id=1465683800&sr=8-1&keywords=hella+sharptone

 

If installing 4 of these (2 sets), I assume I should definitely use at least one relay?

 

Wow- that's some dbs

 

Just thinking of up grading my horns. Great thread!! Thanks for the good info.

 

Do any of y'all's trucks have the honk on lock/unlock function? I think that may be an older 2nd gen thing, but I could be wrong. Anyway, mine sounded pretty awful with that function, so for the time being, I just disabled it.

With the steering wheel switch, the volume sounds fine, but the tone is kinda not what I was expecting. A lot higher pitch than the OEM horns, at least to me. I have them grounded where the stock horns were grounded, and because they're loud I don't suspect grounding issues. Maybe that's just the way they're supposed to sound?

 

Hmmm... I know on other cars I've had supertones on, the lock beep sounded like a farty little "bip" because of how quickly it auto-cycles the horn circuit.

Sharp and super tones both have a split second of an "attack" run-up where they aren't immediately their loudest. This makes factory alarm circuits sometimes make them sound a bit goofy because of how fast they beep the stock horn so as not to be annoying. What you're hearing could be totally normal.

You could also grab some wire and make a "test" grounding strap like my tutorial- doesn't have to be pretty, just throw it in there and see if your horns sound any better. If it improves the condition, then worry about making it permanent.

OH! You're not running them in series, are you? As in, the positive wire from one doesn't daisy chain to the other?

My badass paint skills to the rescue. Terminal polarity doesn't matter on these but you CAN'T run one daisy chained off the other. What's happening then is you're rapidly short circuiting one of the horns and not bringing their full awesomeness to bear.