[viXit]

Rant + DIY

I love good pics, so let's start this off with what I think is one.
This is my Honda City, and how I changed it's stupid set of horns.

A world of white cars!
@RGIA Arrivals ramp

As drivers we honk to let others know of our position with respect to them. It's a sort of communication on the road. Short beep-Hi there! Long Honk -Get out of my way, and many more. Sometimes maybe honk at someone to vent, don't do this though. But us Honda owners, we honk to get ourselves embarassed. Every honk no matter how long or how many times, means only one thing. "DOminate me!". These are Hella dual tone horns but honestly, Activas have better horns. But I was learning to live with it. Then saw LeoShashi's thread. Related to his incident a lot. If not for anything else, for safety, wanted to change the set of horns on my car. Opted for a pair of Bosch Symphony horns. Unfortunately, the ordeal of changing the horns was just as irritating as the meek horn is to me.

Stupid Honda gave us a terrible horn and made our life hard as is is, but in addition to that, made it impossible to change the horn reliably without cutting the Horn's wiring harness.

Add to all this, the Horns are of terrible quality where it matters. There are two horns situated on the drivers side of the car behind the bumper. Marked in the locations below.

The fog lamp has a cut out next to it to aid Audibility of the Horns.
The Passenger side fog lamp doesn't have any cut out next to it.

Driver side with cutout



Passenger side with no grille

Coming to the quality of the horn, it fails very often. Many Honda city owners have had their horns replaced under warranty several times. We've had it fail twice. This is the third replacement from Honda that I will be removing and replacing with Bosch ones. I noticed it sounding strained, changed the horn and battery both.

If you look closely through the grille, you will observe how the horn is rusting away badly. My car is about 5 years old, hardly has 25k kms on it, and is parked in a dry, covered and closed parking and this is the second warranty replacement in case I haven't mentioned it earlier.

Forgot to add that I have a rust spot on the roof too. Just like many other Honda owners who have terribly rusted wheel arches and fenders. Hondas and rust go hand in hand nowadays.

The new horns I'm using.

[viXit]

Cars are DC circuits after all, polarities do matter. But horns are speakers, they get their signal in an AC like fashion, You'll get sound from a speaker even in a wrong polarity, but it will be out of phase with other speakers and kill bass. Standard Horns have two terminals but the Honda horn has only one conductor in it's proprietary horn connector. This connector is a major pain in the tailpipe It's a sealed waterproof type connector with a rubber vapor shield and all that jazz but the horn itself is of horrendous quality which will fail on you. The horn is grounded by the mounting hardware and +ve is from the harness (stupid honda horn connector).

Pic from sam003's post


This is where the connector plugs in, you can see the single metal pin that makes contact. Horn side is shown

Other BHPians have tried, but everyone has either cut or tapped into the wire.
I couldn't bring myself to do that.

[viXit]

What's the workaround?

The connector is a male single conductor weatherproof plug on the car harness side, and a female recepticle on the horn assembly.
Technically it's a male pin inside of a female adapter, you'll get the drift once you see the picture. You can connect a pigtail connector like this and then plug it to the new horn and call it a day. It would be a much easier job too. But Ali sites are closed off , and Amazon won't ship it to India. Everyone in India seems to be happy cutting it off. Here's the pigtail harness

A BHPian told me some car accessory shops might have it, I spent an entire afternoon out in the sun walking from shop to shop to try and find it. No luck
I went to Ranigunj, that many Hyderabadi BHPians will know as the Auto/Mechanical parts hub of Hyderabad.

I tried to take this white connector part from the horn, jank a harness out of it and use it. But the marvels at Honda made this white part so hard to separate it from the horn, that I gave up. It's riveted to the horn and I tried drilling it in hammering mode too. Nothing worked. I didn't want to try the reciprocating saw since I didn't have a vice or grips to hold it steady.

I went to a welding guy, a lathe shop too, but no one could help me. It was unnecessarily durable where it didn't have to be. If only they made their cars tough like this

Accepted my defeat and moved on, an electrician suggested exposing a part of the wire by pulling on the wire with pliers and tap the positive from there. This was not really an option.

If you notice the horn side of the plug, it has a tiny metal tongue like contact pin, what I did was take a red wire, strip it's end, fold the wire's exposed part in two and twisted it to make it thick, and inserted it inside this connector.

The other side of the red wire, I attached a spade connector that the new horn will use. Ask for a "press fit" connector or a Horn connector and they'll know what you want.

snake the wire through the cut and clamp the metal around the wire with pliers. And tug on it to see if it's reliable

[viXit]

Tools required:

Disclaimer your bumper HAS to come off, this is no easy task. Bumper alignment WILL go for a toss. A clip or two will break unless you are EXTREMELY careful.

and the usual, at your own risk warning. I don't know anything, boss
This is time consuming, make sure you have some water or juice handy.

• Yoga mat to meditate when you're irritated, or to lie down to see below the bumper
• Wire. House wiring will do. Preferably color coded.
• 10mm socket wrench, Preferably a ratchet.
• Microfiber cloths to prevent scratches
• Flathead Screwdriver (-) (small tip)
• Philips (+) screwdriver
• Spade connectors
• Insulation tape
• Cutting pliers
• Wire cutters
• New horns?

Let's begin!

Step 1

Start with laying something down near/below the bumper for you to kneel or rest the bumper down. I had a cardboard box I left near the car to wipe my shoes off before entering the car, I used that.

You have several clips four each under each headlight that need to pry lightly. 4 screws, two near each wheel. And countless clips under the hood and on the under side of the bumper. These clips will annihilate your nails, don't try. Use a tiny flathead screwdriver. Very tiny. But not precision screwdriver small.

Step 2

Open the hood, this is the top of your grille.

All these clips have to come out.
Marked in red.





next


Once off,
Pull the entire bit of plastic towards the engine. Then lift up while working around the bonnet release.

Step 3

Go to the wheel well. Towards the front you will see one screw at the bottom, and one hole at the top. Remove the screw you see, and extremely carefully remove the screw in the hole on top. It will fall into the bumper otherwise. I screwed up(pun intended) while reinstalling the bumper and it fell into the bumper.

Remove this bottom screw


Then get the screw inside this hole, take a peek from under, you should see it. Hands were dirty, didn't get a pic. You can be careless while removing it, because even if it falls inside the bumper, you will recover it anyway. But if you drop it while re installation, I don't think you'll bother with taking the bumper off all over again to recover the screw.

Next change

Now lay down your yoga mat, get under the car and start pulling these clips you see. There are many, carefully pry the locking pin first, then the clip. Use your small flathead screwdriver for this.

remove all black clips on white painted surface.




The clips pop out like this.





Please keep these clips carefully somewhere, a bowl would be handy. These buggers cost 113 bucks a pop. Transportation will be multifold if you order them from somewhere. Here's the boodmo link

I was using the Safari's boot as a workbench . That way I can just shut it and go back home without worrying about losing anything



Click/tap on this to open and zoom in to see how the clips look in both open and closed positions.

Step 4

Step 3 was to remove all the removable clips, now that that's out of the way. We have two last clip/mounting types to deal with.

The edge where the bumper meets with the fender has a simple locking mechanism. You just have to pull. These are rigid plastic clips. So if you pull them nice and slow, you will bend them at best or end up breaking them. The way to do it is to tug fast and tug hard. Grab the bumper from the wheel well and tug. It should come right out.

Your next task is to release the clips under the headlights. These are EXTREMELY sensitive. I broke mine. You just have to slightly lift each clip up and pull the bumper towards you.

Lift up the black part slightly with a screwdriver wrapped in microfiber.
And slowly pull the bumper towards yourself as you release each clip. You might need two people here.



Voila!
Your bumper should come right out now. Before separating it from the car, reach behind and unplug the fog lights on both sides, Look down carefully to see if you missed any clips, and you're good to go.

This might be a good time to consider spraying the intercooler and radiator with water to clean the fins. The opportunity won't present itself again.

[viXit]

Wiring

Easy part.


A major chunk of my frustration before I began this was due to the connector. I didn't think that sticking a wire into the hole on the plug was going to be reliable enough. But it worked out fine. I've done this mod on the fourth of August. Running happily till today.


Remove the two horns with the ratchet wrench. 10 numer IIRC. Unplug the Honda Horn plug. Take your new wire. Expose a few cms of wire, Bend it and twist it to make it thick, and insert it snugly into the Honda plug.


The other end of the wire has to be exposed according to the size of the spade connector. Snake the wire through the cut, clamp the metal arms using pliers onto the insulated part. Tug on it to ascertain it's strength.



Should look like this, then bend the wire back down to lock it in. The clamp at the bottom should prevent it from sliding out, but better safe than sorry.



Now slide these onto the horn terminals.




Pay heed to the + and - if possible. Some horns can be picky about the terminals.

I followed this wiring diagram below that Bosch sent me.







The Interface with the factory harness has to be sealed well. Wrap it with copius amounts of insulation tape.




With the + side wrapped up , move to the ground or (-).
The horn on the city, unlike many other cars has only one terminal, the negative is the grounding through the mounting hardware. But the horn has two connectors. So we connect another short wire to the horn, and stick it in the mount .

The new horns have their own mounting hardware, but see whether the old ones were sturdier. Use the better ones..

To ground this new horn, attach a short, but not too short cable. I had to make this grounding connection thrice because I cut it too short.



To make your job easier, you can first connect the ground wire to the body, and then just slide the spade on the horn later.



You screw in the screw to hold the metal mount, push the exposed wire into the hole for the screw, the screw will hold the wire in and ground it.

This is easier said than done. Keep extra slack or more appropriately, length in the wire to help you.

You can also ground it to the mounting plate, although I chose to mount it to the body of the car for a better ground.

These nuts on the mount have a knurled pattern to help grip onto the grounding wire. Use it.



Similar pattern is also seen on the horn side ,which is another spot you can stick in the negative wire. It's all ground anyway.




Mounting the horn should be done with the opening on the trumpet facing down so that the chance of water staying in are lesser. Bosch documentation had a small square depicting recommended mounting.

https://youtu.be/hq-tRy8QTlI

Here's the sound with only the high tone horn. The low tone will follow the same procedure. Once both horns are wired up, honk a few times, shake the connections, honk a little more.

only then put the bumper back on. You will follow the same steps but backwards.
REmember, with plastics, hard fast movements.

And don't drop screws inside bumpers like me. I left mine. I didn't bother taking it out lol

[viXit]

FIN

Once all this is over, shower all that dirt and grime off your body and go for a nice drive. The gratification after a succesful DIY is immense. Truly amazing.

I did just that. Thought I'll honk at some people too. But all the traffic disappeared and I had no one to honk at

Empty streets, no honking


Despite all the little stupid things like rust, weak build, terrible NVH and that god awful front grille... I love this car.



Amazing efficiency, comfy cruising on the highway and great torque.

Took a highway drive to the farm while encountering some rains on the way too. Horns performed flawlessly.



Bonus pics

I store most of my tools in the storme and hence have it nearby whenever I'm fiddling with something.


Might do another 4th gen Facelift city for fellow BHPian Manas' car. I have heard that the connections are a bit different, Will cover the differences on the same thread when I do that.

[GTO]

Thread moved from the Assembly Line to the DIY section. Thanks for sharing!

Going to our homepage today

[car_guy1998]

Kudos to your DIY, Prithvi.

Yes, I accept that the Honda horns are worst and I myself had to change those meek horns to Bosch Symphonys after we purchased the City in 2017, which I later changed to Hella Chromes just before lockdown in 2020 as the Bosch were at the end of its life.

[Mr.Boss]

Kudos for the effort

Adding few points for better & quality result.

This is wrong way of crimping the wire


1 is to secure the wire with sleeve and 2 is where the inner to be crimped


This is how it should be


You can get the terminals with protection sleeve (easily available in market these days)


For ground, use ring terminal. Using the wire directly over the stud will fail easily

[viXit]

Originally Posted by Mr.Boss

Kudos for the effort

Adding few points for better & quality result.

This is wrong way of crimping the wire
Attachment 2197448

1 is to secure the wire with sleeve and 2 is where the inner to be crimped
Attachment 2197444

This is how it should be
Attachment 2197445

You can get the terminals with protection sleeve (easily available in market these days)
Attachment 2197446

For ground, use ring terminal. Using the wire directly over the stud will fail easily
Attachment 2197447

Thanks for these.
Always learning

Will rectify when I open the bumper next time.

[poised2drive]

Originally Posted by viXit

[h3]

Took a highway drive to the farm while encountering some rains on the way too. Horns performed flawlessly.

Wow

I never expected that replacing the horns would be such a laboriously taxing task. And surprising to know that you had to go to great lengths for a job like this. ( it seems Honda does not like its horns to be altered, I guess)
I wish you many more DIY tasks on your CITY & Safari

Originally Posted by viXit

Might do another 4th gen Facelift city for fellow BHPian Manas' car. I have heard that the connections are a bit different, Will cover the differences on the same thread when I do that.

I am glad that you earned some experience !

My Snowolf's horns are so silently lame that the engine's grunt seems to be noticed before the sound of the horn.

[viXit]

Originally Posted by poised2drive

I never expected that replacing the horns would be such a laboriously taxing task. And surprising to know that you had to go to great lengths for a job like this. ( it seems Honda does not like its horns to be altered, I guess)

I wish the horns were mounted higher, it would be safer from water that way, and just the grille would have had to come out that way.

But I'm sure honda's engineers had some genius logic behind all this.

I am glad that you earned some experience !

Haha,
Varun told me about your car too.
When are you in HYD again?

Shouldn't take more than an hour since I already finished doing it once.

My Snowolf's horns are so silently lame that the engine's grunt seems to be noticed before the sound of the horn.

I think that's more of an i-DTEC problem than a horn problem. I hate it too

[MoTo_meister]

Great DIY there, ViXit! Contrary to popular belief, Honda's aren't as DIY-friendly as they are made to be. Even something as simple as a horn replacement is quite a task - I speak from experience after having done the same on my Brio, although that wasn't as laborious as your City DIY

Standard Horns have two terminals but the Honda horn has only one conductor in it's propriety horn connector.

Speaking of non-universal horn connectors, I came across this site, RS Delivers: https://in.rsdelivers.com/ (not affiliated to them in any form) for sourcing connectors for my Skoda Laura after scouring boodmo's entire catalogue, since the Laura has the 'VW D-type' connectors, as it is known in the automotive circle and on VW/Skoda forums. And the same reasoning behind it - electrician asked to cut the end of the factory wiring to put aftermarket horns on the Skoda but I said no to the same and found the exact connectors for the DIY.

I am not quite sure but this seems compatible with the OEM connector that came with your City:
https://in.rsdelivers.com/product/te...tive-1/7199558

If not, you can set some time apart and search for it if in case you want/need to

[allinbalance]

@viXit Amazing DIY. I learned so much. I own a Honda Jazz ZX A/T and have only done two fitments - tyre upsizing and horn changed. And boy! The horns are worse than lame.

I now understand the trick of how to do it right. The J C Road, Bangalore shop I went to - to change into after market Skoda type horn did a lot of jugaad without removing the bumper and used the existing terminal with some improvised inserts and mounted the trumpets higher up above the main engine block. But I guess that is street jugaad - its working well so far.

By the way, you do write very well!!

[jinojohnt]

A noob question - Is it possible to lift the car and work underneath rather than dismantling so many parts (of course you'll need to take it to a workshop for this)? If not, all I have to say is "Kudos Honda for making this so complex".