Modern Vespa

Sorry I haven't taken any pictures..... I hope my "drawing" helps!

Preparation:

Take off the Piaggio badge and the front cover as detailed in the owner's manual for changing headlight bulbs.

Then take off the grey spoiler panel beneath the windscreen (5 screws).

Remove the foot panel rubber under your left foot and undo the small screws that hold the underfairing. There are another couple of screws behind the left front mudguard (on the floorboard fairing) to remove, to allow you to get at the original horn.

You don't have to take the fairing that covers the original horn off, you just have to manoeuver and bend it back a bit so that you can get at the horn.

Install:

Remove the original horn and in its place substitute the relay plugging the original horn connectors onto terminals 85 and 86 of the relay.

Connect a fused feed from the battery and feed it down to the relay and connect it to terminal 30. Feed another wire up to the windscreen area securing it tightly and avoiding the front suspension, connecting it to terminal 87. This is the wiring done.

Now for the compact. Get a hacksaw and cut off the original mounting block that is attached to the body of the horn. This gets in the way and needs removal.

The horn is mounted silver cylindrical body of the horn upwards, lying horizontally with the terminals pointing to the left, when looking from the front of the scooter. The black plastic horn opening will be facing in towards the suspension area of the scooter - the sound of the horn will reflect out when it is honked.

I suggest you stick some double sided foam tape to the bits of the horn which make contact with the scooter to stop it vibrating. I stuck one bit along the silver body of the horn where it makes contact with the underside of the speedo unit and another bit on the round "mushroom" shaped area of the horn where it makes contact with the rear side of the gray plastic under-windshield spoiler. Connect the negative terminal of the horn to the frame and the positive to the relay feed 87 which you have just routed. Manoeuver the horn into place and cable tie it to the body coloured cross brace that runs across the front fairing.

Secure the relay in place of the original horn with a cable tie and replace all the fairing screws.

Replace the front spoiler, windshield and fairing and you're done...

The most difficult bit of this install is getting at the original horn as the space under the fairing is really tight, but take your time and you'll be fine. Routing the feed fron the battery positive isn't too hard just make sure you cable tie as you go along. Having self adhesive cable ties helps when going along under the footboard helps. They also help with the routing form the relay up to the horn as you don't want that feed fouling the suspension parallellogram!

Thanks for those instructions, I'll have a go at mine on a day off work when it isn't raining (= long wait )

Nice work, I'm looking to add one of these soon. One question though, I thought the horn had to be mounted pretty close to vertical?

It should be, but here it is completely waterproof so it doesn't need the drainage.

Ahh thanks for the info, I had no idea it needed vertical mounting for drainage, I thought it was an operational design issue.

So when you pull up and hit the horn, where do the car drivers look?

Meaning?

Sound from the horn comes from the front as ususal. Makes dozy pedestrians jump a foot in the air!

Meaning when I had an air horn in my Helix, And I felt the need to use it, the other drivers usually jumped and started looking for the Semi.

Excellent instructions thank you. I just finished installing mine, exactly as you suggested. Works brilliantly.

Glad it worked well for you!

Is there any real delay between pushing the horn switch, and hearing the horn? ie, when I want to hit the horn, I want to do it RIGHT NOW! So when you hit the horn, does it go right off, like an electric, or does it take a second?

The Nautilus reacts instantaneously. I too have read that some other multi-part airhorn systems (Fiamm?) have some delay while the compressor, I guess, 'spools up'. But not this puppy. Wham.

Cool. Thats just what I wanted to hear.

will the instructions above work with the fuoco?

if yes, i need this:


http://www.amazon.com/Black-Stebel-Nautilus-Compact-Motorcycle/dp/B000NPRTII

and what else??

thanks

g

love the 500, but the horn is whimpy

I'm afraid I don't know if there is space under the'dash' for the Nautilus on the Fuoco. If you can find a spot for it, the kit comes with the Relay but that's about all. You'll neet the following:

Some 12 or 14 gauge wire (maybe 10 feet), an inline 30A fuse, four female blade-type connectors, two ring terminals (one for batt, one for grounding to frame), about a dozen zipties (for hanging the horn and tidying the wiring).

It's been a whole year since I did this on my MP3 250. Thanks again to the author! Now I have a 400 and wanted to do the same thing, but though, hey I wonder if the original horn can be left in parallel?

Can anyone tell me if that's doable, and is it just a matter of leaving it there and putting on the relay in parallel? (I'm showing my ignorance here, I know!)

Oo - also - is there any way to do this without feeding under the foot boards? That was a DEVIL of a job last time!

The wiring is the same for the Fuoco. As to fitting it see HERE

The +ve and -ve on the realy I took the conection off the standard horn and used those.

Nice job!

+1 With remarks. The horn on your MP3 will sound for two reasons. If you are pressing the horn button, things are great. But if you are in your garage and the pressure has dropped in your tilt lock mechanism, your 130 db of Stebel Nautilus is going to get your heart rate up to 130 bpm in an instant, because you will not be aware that it is going to go off when you trun the key.

That's the reason to power the Stebel relay from the headlights. Will only work when the engine is running.

hmm so could you leave the original horn in the 250? Where would be the next best place the the air horn?
thanks I need to do this mod sooon.

I hear you can dry your hair with one of these...



Thanks for all the info, you did good.

LL75

Maroy wrote:
If you are pressing the horn button, things are great. But if you are in your garage and the pressure has dropped in your tilt lock mechanism, your 130 db of Stebel Nautilus is going to get your heart rate up to 130 bpm in an instant, because you will not be aware that it is going to go off when you trun the key.
That's the reason to power the Stebel relay from the headlights. Will only work when the engine is running.

I left the stock horn separated the wires from the tilt failure and horn button. Left the tilt lock on stock horn, extended the horn switch wire to new relay for Stebel. Keeps the beep-beep for failures and the air blast for the cagers

When I installed my dual Fiamms I ran the positive lead to the relay all the way to the horn switch itself and tapped in on the dead side. My thinking being that when I depress the horn switch all three (the stock and both Fiamms) fire but in the event of a warning like tilt lock pressure drop, only the stock will sound. Not sure if my thinking was sound on this.

In any event the Fiamms while loud (sounds like a loud VW) will not make your ears bleed like the stebel. Loud enough to get the attention of drivers and pedestrians but without causing then to go into shock
Has already saved me drastic manuevering one quite a few occassions.

PS Nice to see you back Emtwo. WYB?

check the date on his post. its been a few months

So it has. Wonder where he went?

I had a motorcycle shop who sells and services scooters to install my Stebel. We disconnected the original horn. I did not realize the original was an alarm system to warn of potential system failures. Are there any other features the original horn is used for except beeping?

Some members have posted the horn going off in the middle of the might due to a tilt / lock problem. If you and your neighbors don't mind the blast of an air horn at 2am leave it as is.

no, you need to only power the stebel when the engine is started/running. You can do this thru the headlight relay that will energize the horn relay.

OAD he has removed the stock horn the replaced with the a relay in its place. If you do what you say it will have no tilt lock warnings from the horn when parked.

And you would *want* a Stebel blaring until your eardrums are numb?

Bubba here's the original post. Gives you both

That's one way to do it. I think OAD was talking about the way he and I and several others did it. Rather than try and dig around with the existing tilt and horn setup, we simply ran our Stebels to a relay attached to a headlight relay for power and also the horn power. This means that when the tilt lock "error" comes on, you get just the regular horn. When the headlights are off, you can even beep the normal horn(with just center light on). But when she's running, the stebel belts out a tune. I agree that I would never have my stebel wired so that it can come on for any sort of alarm.

I think I did something similar. I used two relays and wired it so that one relay, controlled by the engine on relay under the dash, powers the Stebel relay, which gets it's signal from the regular horn and the two relays are powered directly from the battery with a 10ga fused wire. From there, I'll add a distribution block for any other accessories that I might add (heated gear, hard wired GPS, etc) so that when the engine is off, so are they and no battery power is drained.

With the engine off, I can meep, meep away. As soon as the engine is running, I get the full force of the 139db.

Check out the topic spreadsheet in the wiki, there's bound to be a few threads on different ways of juicing a horn.

But that's not what you said - you said and further commented that if he disconnected it then he would have no alarm. If it were separate then there would be no issue. Most everyone who has installed a Stebel has done so using an auxillary relay and the headlamp trigger. Somehow we crossed our wires but no biggie...

LOL - I had never encountered the tilt lock warning until the other morning. I dunno if it was the rain or what but here it is 6:30 AM and that sumbitch *waited* until the engine was running before it went off. I like to crapped my pants as I was *not* expecting it - my neighbor Pam came running out to see what the hell was going on. Embarrassing...
It has not done it since.

Your bike's a prick.

I always wondered if something like that would happen as you described. That would suck if it happened in my echo chamber garage.

My bike can only be a little prick since only the stock horn is connected to the tilt lock

I just moved my Stebel from its former location (below the left dashboard, where the left suspension contacted it in tightly banked left turns) to where DougL mounted his, except I mounted mine in a more vertical orientation.

Former location, with suspension tilted:


New location:


Bracket #1:


Closeup of mounting. You can sorta see bracket #2 and where it mounts to the plastic crossbar:


What you can't see is a 3/32" x 1" strip of aluminum running from side to side, right behind the plastic, and anchored to the upper windshield mounts. (I didn't think the plastic would be enough to hold the horn in the long term, but it should be OK with the extra metal. Even so, I'll check the aluminum for fatigue periodically.) The upper part of bracket #2 is sandwiched between the aluminum and plastic crosspieces. I used nylon lock nuts and safety wire on both bracket junctions.

There's just enough room to get the cap off of that hydraulic reservoir.

The installation needed a bit of tweaking. Details here:
http://www.skidmore.edu/~pdwyer/mp3/stebel.htm