How to Wire and Install Hella Horns

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

These are Hella Sharptone horns. You can get them from 1AAuto.com. They're pretty much a universal fitment. You can put them in any car. You just have to adapt the wiring to your vehicle's wiring.

They come as a pair. There's a high and a low tone, just like a lot of cars have a high and a low tone. You can usually mount them in the same spot as the original horn. Some people like to mount them up where you can see them through the grill. But they come with little brackets to figure out the polarity of the terminals, so this should be the positive, this should be the negative. They work off 12 volts.

It says it right here in the brackets. We've adapted and made some harnesses. We're going to use these to ground the two horns together, and then we may need a little extender one for the positive on one side just because the factory wiring's a little short. Just simply took some spade terminals—crimped them on some 18 gauge wire, automotive wiring. I used a little butt splice connector, put the two wires in here, a little heat-shrink and some electrical tape to make a connection to the ground. And then just an open terminal I can put under a bolt here. That should work for us there. So just like we said, these horns are universal. We're going to install them on this Subaru here.

I want to test the polarity of this horn. This should be the positive, and this should be the negative. I've got the battery here. I've pulled the positive terminal cover up. I'm just going to carefully put my finger on the negative terminal. That'll be the ground. And then you want to face this away from you because they are really loud. I'm just going to touch it to the positive, so I've actually got them backwards. Let me flip them over. It looks like there's actually a little tiny mark right there. That might mean positive. It doesn't look like a plus sign, though. Let me flip these over. So I'll put that on the negative, and I'll touch this to the positive.

Next step would be to find your horns. On this particular car, they're actually behind the grille. There's one over here and one down in here. I got to remove this grille. I need a flat bladed screwdriver. There's some clips along the top and two push clips down through these openings here. So I actually push these in. They kind of go to an open position. Kind of helps if you pull it out a little bit at the same time. Just go along the top.

Actually, that unlocked pretty easily from the bottom. There's little push tabs. You'd normally just go in and push it with a flat bladed screwdriver to unlock it. This one on this side is actually broken. I'm going to start by removing this horn that's over here. Spray a little bit of rust penetrant. That way and on the back side. It's 12 millimeter. Use a little socket and ratchet extension. Block the horn as I loosen it. This is pretty rusty. I'm going to spray some more rust penetrant in there. Work it, I'm going to turn it back in. Kind of work the rust penetrant into the threads because I don't want to break the bolt off. Feels like it's coming out nice and smooth now. Let's see if I can get that bolt out of here. There's the bolt. It fell off the bottom. This is just a spade terminal. Just pull it straight off. Just like that. I'm going to remove the other horn now. Spray a little bit of rust penetrant. On the front and on the back. This one's also a 12 millimeter. Pull this off. Put that aside. I want to mount my horns off the hood latch support. So this looks like an ambient temp sensor. I'm just going to unbolt it, and I'll put my horn right over it and bolt it right back in.

This looks like it uses a ten millimeter. Spray some rust penetrant on there. Or you can try a Phillips-Head, but I've got the ten millimeter socket handy. I'm just going to install this horn. Reusing this bolt, putting it right back in the opening. Tighten that up. Kind of get it lined up so it's level. Tighten it down. I'm going to take our positive and just kind of root it around from the other side, and it was this lower terminal. Just push it on.

I'll do the ground after I have the other one installed. If you don't like the position of these terminals, you can actually just loosen this 13 millimeter nut and rotate it on the bracket. So I'm just going to loosen it up. Actually, it's just spinning anyways. That should put them at the bottom for me. Yep, just like that. I'm just going to install the horn using the original bolt. Put it right into place. Just threading it into the original hole, getting it lined up. Just getting it lined up visually with the other one. And I'll tighten it down. So our positive terminal from the original car harness is still too short, so I'm going to use this little jumper harness I made. So this just has a spade terminal connector. It's going to go into here. And then this one is going to go on the horn. Just like that.

Now we need to install this ground harness that we made. So I am going to put it on this side. Just feed it under the original. On this side. This one will fit over here. This one. Now I can just run, I can put this harness over, tuck it right here, and I will run it. I'll loosen this bolt up and run it underneath. Underneath just like that. Make sure they're lined up the way I want it. And we'll tighten this down.

So I'll put our grille back in. Going to put these locking parts, they go in the lower pieces right here. The knees will fit over the clips. They're in the radiator support. Start with the bottom ones, and at the same time you might have to line these up. Just simply push in just like that. Now they're locked in place. Alright now we're going to test the sound from ten feet away.

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