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Wanted to upgrade the horn . . . at first I considered one of those multiple air horn setups that people sometimes install, but there are both space and cost issues for those. Decided to go with the Wolo “Bad Boy” horn, Model 419, 123.5 Decibels (advertised as 2x loud as stock), about the same size as the stock horn and one-bolt mounting also like stock, and only about $40.
Removed the passenger side front wheel and removed all fasteners for the plastic wheel well except for the back/bottom two plastic push fasteners – these can only be accessed by removing the factory nerf bar if you have them (which I do). They don’t need to be removed anyway, once you have the 3 8mm bolt/washers, the 4 small screws around the fender, the 3 10mm bolts that hold the air reservoir to the fender well, and the one front push fastener removed, you can pull the fender well loose from the front and let it hang enough to access the horn.
Since both the stock horn and the “Bad Boy” horn are two-wire units, to just replace the factory horn with the Bad Boy you’d have to remove the one bolt holding the stock horn to the body, cut the factory electrical connector off, attach some female terminals (not supplied with the Bad Boy, for some reason) to the stock wires, then attach the Bad Boy to the body and hook up the wires. Since I’m not too keen on cutting off factory electrical connections, and also since the bolt that holds the factory horn in is not easy to get to, at this point I had a “voila” moment, and thought: why don’t I just leave the factory horn in place, and wire in the Bad Boy as an additional horn!
Found an excellent spot to attach the Bad boy on the bumper brace right near the stock horn – there was even a factory hole already there! Used the bolt that actually was supplied with the Bad Boy (unlike the necessary terminals) and attached it to the brace tightly. Next I stripped about 1/3 of an inch of insulation on the factory horn wires (slightly offset so the stripped sections didn’t touch) and soldered some 16 gauge wire to the stripped sections. After taping them up, I re-attached the factory connector to the factory horn. . . put some terminals on the ends of the new wires and attached them to the Bad Boy, hit the horn button and it worked great!
Now the only problem I saw with the mounting location for my Bad Boy was that it was going to take a lot of splashing from the front tire when I drove in the rain, and even though that may or may not be a problem, that is something I would like to avoid, so I thought some kind of splash shield would be good to have. There are probably many different containers that would work, but what I used was an empty 1-gallon black plastic transmission fluid jug . . . cut it in half, attached a piece of light metal bendable plumbing strap to it, then put the strap on the same bolt that holds the Bad Boy to the brace and used a second nut to hold the plumbing strap on.
Lastly, I was concerned about blowing a fuse with the additional horn on the same circuit . . . fortunately the horn has it’s own fuse with nothing else on it, so I replaced the 15A horn fuse with a 20A. This seems to be working fine, and if any of you electrical geniuses out there thinks there is an issue with this, please let me know!
Pics attached. So now I have a horn that my simple math tells me is 3x factory (1x for the factory and two more X’s for the Bad Boy) with minimal expense and almost no modifications to the truck, and I’m now ready to wake up some of those texting idiots!!!
Removed the passenger side front wheel and removed all fasteners for the plastic wheel well except for the back/bottom two plastic push fasteners – these can only be accessed by removing the factory nerf bar if you have them (which I do). They don’t need to be removed anyway, once you have the 3 8mm bolt/washers, the 4 small screws around the fender, the 3 10mm bolts that hold the air reservoir to the fender well, and the one front push fastener removed, you can pull the fender well loose from the front and let it hang enough to access the horn.
Since both the stock horn and the “Bad Boy” horn are two-wire units, to just replace the factory horn with the Bad Boy you’d have to remove the one bolt holding the stock horn to the body, cut the factory electrical connector off, attach some female terminals (not supplied with the Bad Boy, for some reason) to the stock wires, then attach the Bad Boy to the body and hook up the wires. Since I’m not too keen on cutting off factory electrical connections, and also since the bolt that holds the factory horn in is not easy to get to, at this point I had a “voila” moment, and thought: why don’t I just leave the factory horn in place, and wire in the Bad Boy as an additional horn!
Found an excellent spot to attach the Bad boy on the bumper brace right near the stock horn – there was even a factory hole already there! Used the bolt that actually was supplied with the Bad Boy (unlike the necessary terminals) and attached it to the brace tightly. Next I stripped about 1/3 of an inch of insulation on the factory horn wires (slightly offset so the stripped sections didn’t touch) and soldered some 16 gauge wire to the stripped sections. After taping them up, I re-attached the factory connector to the factory horn. . . put some terminals on the ends of the new wires and attached them to the Bad Boy, hit the horn button and it worked great!
Now the only problem I saw with the mounting location for my Bad Boy was that it was going to take a lot of splashing from the front tire when I drove in the rain, and even though that may or may not be a problem, that is something I would like to avoid, so I thought some kind of splash shield would be good to have. There are probably many different containers that would work, but what I used was an empty 1-gallon black plastic transmission fluid jug . . . cut it in half, attached a piece of light metal bendable plumbing strap to it, then put the strap on the same bolt that holds the Bad Boy to the brace and used a second nut to hold the plumbing strap on.
Lastly, I was concerned about blowing a fuse with the additional horn on the same circuit . . . fortunately the horn has it’s own fuse with nothing else on it, so I replaced the 15A horn fuse with a 20A. This seems to be working fine, and if any of you electrical geniuses out there thinks there is an issue with this, please let me know!
Pics attached. So now I have a horn that my simple math tells me is 3x factory (1x for the factory and two more X’s for the Bad Boy) with minimal expense and almost no modifications to the truck, and I’m now ready to wake up some of those texting idiots!!!
