SlashWylde
22nd August 2010, 20:52
I've been wanting to fit a Stebel to my bike for some years now. After recently finding out about FastBikeGear.co.nz and how good their prices are on these horns, I decided to get one.
Ordered on a Thursday night and the unit arrived at work the next day. Wow! that is fast bike gear.
Didn't have time to install it last weekend but I hooked it up to a car battery to see how it sounded. Yup, it's loud allright.
Today I bought the fuse holder, cable and QC terminals I needed to install the horn and set to work.
The unit is bigger than I expected and it just wasn't going to sit right anywhere on the outside of the bike. After some deliberation I decided to mount the horn under a side cover of my bike - see attached pictures. I tested it in this location with the cover on and it sounds fine.
I figured I might as well leave the factory horn in situ to keep some forward firing sound, so I piggy backed off the connections to the existing horn to drive the Stebel's relay coil in parallel to this.
The install was very straight forward, the only issue I had was that once I had it all wired-up and ready to test, the horn sounded as soon as I inserted the 20A fuse into its holder. I checked the contacts of the relay and they appeared to be Normally Closed (NC) regardless of whether or not the coil was energised.
I pulled the relay out and removed its plastic cover. It was then apparent that the male QC terminal had been pushed into the body of the relay when I connected the lead from the battery, and it had caused the relay contacts to make permanently. All I had to do to fix the problem was to pull the terminal blade back out till the switch contacts were Normally Open (NO) again. This fault wasn't the result of excessive force on my part, as it did not take much pressure or manoeuvring to displace the terminal in the plastic base of the relay. I eventually secured all the leads by PVC taping them together and to the relay housing to provide some strain relief.
After reassembling the relay everything checked out and both horns sounded out loud and clear when and only when, I pressed the horn button.
Took her for a quick spin around the block to see how it sounded whilst riding - loud, but not deafening inside my helmet, so no worries there.
All in all I'm very pleased with the result. Fast Bike Gear have these units available for a good price. The unit was delivered very quickly. The product's performance exceeded expectations. My only criticism is that the quality of the relay was disappointing and could have been better - not sure if this relay is sourced by FBG or if it comes packaged with the horn from Stebel.
Thanks to the good folks at Fast Bike Gear.
Ordered on a Thursday night and the unit arrived at work the next day. Wow! that is fast bike gear.
Didn't have time to install it last weekend but I hooked it up to a car battery to see how it sounded. Yup, it's loud allright.
Today I bought the fuse holder, cable and QC terminals I needed to install the horn and set to work.
The unit is bigger than I expected and it just wasn't going to sit right anywhere on the outside of the bike. After some deliberation I decided to mount the horn under a side cover of my bike - see attached pictures. I tested it in this location with the cover on and it sounds fine.
I figured I might as well leave the factory horn in situ to keep some forward firing sound, so I piggy backed off the connections to the existing horn to drive the Stebel's relay coil in parallel to this.
The install was very straight forward, the only issue I had was that once I had it all wired-up and ready to test, the horn sounded as soon as I inserted the 20A fuse into its holder. I checked the contacts of the relay and they appeared to be Normally Closed (NC) regardless of whether or not the coil was energised.
I pulled the relay out and removed its plastic cover. It was then apparent that the male QC terminal had been pushed into the body of the relay when I connected the lead from the battery, and it had caused the relay contacts to make permanently. All I had to do to fix the problem was to pull the terminal blade back out till the switch contacts were Normally Open (NO) again. This fault wasn't the result of excessive force on my part, as it did not take much pressure or manoeuvring to displace the terminal in the plastic base of the relay. I eventually secured all the leads by PVC taping them together and to the relay housing to provide some strain relief.
After reassembling the relay everything checked out and both horns sounded out loud and clear when and only when, I pressed the horn button.
Took her for a quick spin around the block to see how it sounded whilst riding - loud, but not deafening inside my helmet, so no worries there.
All in all I'm very pleased with the result. Fast Bike Gear have these units available for a good price. The unit was delivered very quickly. The product's performance exceeded expectations. My only criticism is that the quality of the relay was disappointing and could have been better - not sure if this relay is sourced by FBG or if it comes packaged with the horn from Stebel.
Thanks to the good folks at Fast Bike Gear.