DIY FIAMM Freeway Blaster Low Tone installation inside fairing

[The Blue Rider]

Here is another way of mounting a FIAMM Freeway Blaster horn to the Ninjette - internally!

As we all know the stock horn is crap, and it's in a crappy engineering-afterthought kind of position, too, hanging out just in front of the radiator behind the forks.

No offense to the folks who have found a way to mount replacements horn in the stock position, but I just couldn't make it work. I use a Pit Bull front stand which inserts a pin into the front triple tree clamp, and all the available radiator mount options interfered with either steering travel or the lift stand in some way.

I had my bike up on stands for some unrelated work this past week and I finally figured out a solution which seems to work OK - hanging the horn in the gap between the gas tank and the fairing interior, using one of the bolts for the rectifier (?) cooling fin assembly as a mounting point.

Required hardware:

1. Tools - Metric sockets and wrenches, not sure of the exact size, I think 10mm - but you should have the right ones by now anyway if you're doing this

2. FIAMM Freeway Blaster Low Tone horn. The one I got from Amazon is linked below; the second link shows the parts that came in the package.

FIAMM 72112 Low Tone at Amazon

Another product page with a view of package contents

3. Go to Lowes/Ace/Whatever and pick up the following:

- A 3/4" steel spacer which will fit over an M6 bolt
- Some M6 washers
- A Metric M6x1.00 hex cap bolt, 50mm length. 40mm is too short! If you can't find 50, then you can do 60 with some spacers. Too much is better than not enough.
- A small rubber grommet, about 1/2 inch across, the kind that looks like a wheel with a groove in it - see this image. This is optional but I picked one up to give a little bit of isolation to the horn.

You can also re-use one of the stock horn mount washers, and some loctite will be used also.

The FIAMM kit comes with a bracket and a mounting nut.

What I did was to take out the rear bolt of the cooling fin assembly and insert a longer one to serve as a mounting point for the FIAMM-supplied horn bracket. The bracket has two holes, one larger than the other.

First, after some test-fitting, I used a couple of plumbing wrenches - I don't have a vise - and twisted the bracket a little to aim the horn a bit towards the bike centerline.

I placed the horn in the larger bracket hole, assembling as follows:

- Squeeze the rubber grommet into the larger bracket hole
- Insert horn post, might be a tight fit. Not sure of the grommet size I bought, I just kind of eyeballed it at the hardware store.
- Place the larger stock horn washer over the rubber on the other side.
- Cap the protruding post with the nut from the FIAMM kit. Don't tighten it all down yet!

Then for the mount I assembed like this:

- Long M6 screw through the bracket with a washer on either side of the bracket
- Slide on 3/4" spacer
- One more washer after the spacer, this will go against the fin assembly

Final assembly takes a bit of trial and error to get positioning and tightness right. I tried to position the horn to fire out towards bike centerline, between the frame bar and above the radiator, without putting too much pull on the stock horn wiring. You want everything tightened down well so the horn doesn't rotate in the bracket, and the bracket doesn't rotate on the bolt, but you don't want to overtighten or crush things either. It's also a little tricky getting Loctite onto the right spots to help keep things in place. I used the red bottle/green liquid Loctite 609 instead of blue.

Once everything is tightened into place, re-route the stock horn wires to the new position; you might want to zip-tie them to the main wiring harness. The stock horn mounting pieces can be removed.

Here are some mediocre iPhone pictures which show the final assembly.







I haven't tested this setup out on the road, but in the garage it works just fine, and it's nice and loud even though the horn is inside the bodywork.

[Countersteer]

Nice job! I think you might scare your rectifier though...

I installed a similar Wolo brand in the stock location. Had to do some bracket work as well.

[Alex]

/linked

[dubojr1]

From experience I'd have to say that the mount bracket will tend to fail at some point due to the single mounting point. Everyday riding will cause the horn to bounce and eventually the bracket will crack and fail. I would recommend at least maybe drilling a hole somewhere in the plastic horn and zip tying it to something near by. That will slow if not stop the bounce. GL and keep us informed!

[Countersteer]

Originally Posted by dubojr1

From experience I'd have to say that the mount bracket will tend to fail at some point due to the single mounting point. Everyday riding will cause the horn to bounce and eventually the bracket will crack and fail. I would recommend at least maybe drilling a hole somewhere in the plastic horn and zip tying it to something near by. That will slow if not stop the bounce. GL and keep us informed!

You're right. It does bounce too much and I have been thinking about moving it. Perhaps I'll scare my rectifier as well!

[leed]

If you tighten it up against something else (say the fairing mount tacked on the gas tank) with a ziptie just enough to reduce the degrees of freedom, the bouncing should reduce. That being said, the bracket looks thick enough for it not to be an issue.

[dubojr1]

Just for reference... The bracket I used was made from 1/8" aluminum and it failed in about 6 months. The steel/galvanize one may last longer but ultimately will fail without a second point of contact, preferably 180 degree's from the first. Zipping it up to the fairing mount on the tank as suggested could work.

[leed]

Originally Posted by dubojr1

Just for reference... The bracket I used was made from 1/8" aluminum and it failed in about 6 months. The steel/galvanize one may last longer but ultimately will fail without a second point of contact, preferably 180 degree's from the first. Zipping it up to the fairing mount on the tank as suggested could work.

It's hard to compare to an unknown material and unknown loading conditions, but typically aluminium has a much shorter fatigue life than steel in low load conditions. Granted, the material he has chosen is clearly thinner than 1/8" so it's hard to say.

If you really have nothing else and are still worried about the reliability of the material... Take a hammer and A. flatten out that crooked spot (looks terrible! ) and B. use a ball-peen hammer to mimic (as well as can be done) shot peening. As a result you will have a material with a longer fatigue life due to the residual stressed induced from the plastic compression of the material.

Either way, strap it up, use some thicker material, and call it a day!