got pissed at my siege hammer 3 with a busted diaphragm so i just ordered a set of shocker xl’s yesterday.
my current setup is at 200PSIg. viair 380c, 3 ga. tank. i was looking and it looked like most of the stuff only came with a 150PSIg pressure switch. should i lower my operating pressure or will 200 be fine?
That’s been discussed on the forum already… If you notice, some peoples signatures say they run their shockers at 150 psi.
When I got mine, HB had a Shocker kit out of the box set at 200 PSI (although I don’t see it listed any more…not sure why…). I went with the 150 PSI and a 2-gallon tank to start with, but with my setup I quickly found out I wanted more capacity. According to the marketing info, the horns have a little nicer tone at 150. If you have a pressure gauge on the system, it’s pretty amazing how fast it drains, though. I now run a 145/175 pressure switch on mine, and even with 7 gallons of air it drops from 170 down to 135 with just one “good” blast. It does several nice short toots before it kicks the compressor on, but if you wanna really lay on it once in a while you may find as I did that I would just as soon not listen to the compressor so much.
Many people do run them @ 200, but they are a higher pitch, and more prone to diaphragm failure… I had a siege setup also that took a dump. It was also run @ 200 psi with the 380c… I got a 110-150 psi pressure switch and it works great with the 380c… I like the 380c because it is constant duty… It can put up the abuse of constant refills…
BTW- i also had a 3 gal tank… Got old quick once i had the shockers hooked up… 
I then went to a 5 gal tank… And now that i have my k3 i am going with 2-5gal tanks 
Unfortunately its gonna have to gimp along with the one 380c for now tho… But ive heard of and seen other people use the same 380c with bigger tanks… 
i’m not asking if it can be ran at 150, i am wanting to know if they can be ran at 200.
and thanks, looks like a bigger tank is in my near future then. guess i will probably piggy back either another 3 gallon or possibly a 5 gallon on top my my 3 gallon i already have, then buy another pressure switch, even though i just replaced my current only about a month ago
I run mine at 200. Its nice lol
You can run them at 200 but they wont sound as nice. Its like turning the radio all the way up till it ditorts, which do you like. My K3 cant be run at 200psi without damage so I keep 200 in the tank and regulate the line at 150. It gives me some reserve air. Even with a good blast, I only bump down to 170 from 200 and the compressors dont turn on until 165.
they came in today, they dwarf my old hammer 3. gave them a little test with the air hose and they sound great! gonna make a bracket to hold them all tomorrow at work, then mount them up on the truck saturday.
probably gonna see how they sound at 200, then get a new lower PSI pressure switch later, along with a 2nd tank
An alternative to consider is to use a regulator to limit the PSI to the horns. I haven’t tried this, but from what I’ve read here in the forums you can kinda have your cake and eat it too if you have the compressor / tank combo that will allow you to run 200 PSI, and regulate the output to say, 150. You’ll get longer blast times without having to add more tanks because of the higher pressures in the tank, but you won’t rip the lungs out of your horns if you turn the regulator down to something more reasonable. I considered doing that myself, and would still do that if I was using a 5-gallon tank instead of the 7-gallon. My compressor and tank will handle the higher pressures, but technically the compressor is only supposed to be used with a max of 5 gallons and 200 psi, so I used a lower cutoff pressure to counteract the extra stress the pump would see since I’m using 7 . So far I’m very happy with the overall results. At 145 the Shockers will definitely get your attention, and at 175 they REALLY wail! :eek: I’m just waiting to see how long the Hadleys I have piggybacked in there with the Shockers hold up before I see pieces of diaphragm hanging out of the bells! LOL If I set the Hadleys off by themselves, they scream pretty good too!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!! (sorry…I just can’t resist…tooooooooo much fun!!)
just wondering, how long a blast can you get with your shockers with the previous 2gal tank? I’m thinking of getting shocker horns but wondering if my tank is up to it. 
well i just aquired a 2nd 3 gallon tank for free, so i am gonna piggyback it on with my current 3 gallon, and still probalby drop down to a 175 PSI pressure switch.
IIRC right, HB advertised that the 2 gallon tank was good for a 5-second blast starting from 145 psi. I never ran mine all the way empty, and got a pretty good honk as it was. I believe your 275 is rated to fill faster than my 280C, and ViAir pumps are good for 5 gallons capacity, so that would give you a decent balance.
I swapped my stuff out because running 2 sets of horns at the same time eats more air, so it drains air faster than just the HB Shockers. I also wanted to be sure my tank was safe. I had a 5-gallon portable tank piggybacked onto the HB, but it was only rated for 125 psi, and I didn’t want to take a chance on the thing exploding on me since the only place I have to put it is right behind the front seats. Even now what I have is a compromise. The compressor is rated for 200 psi with a max tank volume of 5 gallons. My 7-gallon tank was the least money for a tank I could find with a 200 psi rating, so I used a pressure switch that shuts down the pump at 175 to offset the detail that I’m exceeding the capacity-per-compressor rating. The fill rate is now plenty fast enough to keep the compressor from running “forever” when the pressure switch kicks in, and running the compressor to a reduced pressure should help keep it from roasting itself to an early death.
In all honesty, if you wanna really get the best bang for your buck and you have the room to put it, their 5-gallon setup with the 400C is really a good deal. If I had to do it all over again, I would do that simply because it fills fast, has good air volume, and with the parts separate like they are, it’s not as hard to find a place to mount everything. I have close to twice their asking price sunk into my system now because of the upgrades I went with. I do have another car and another set of air horns waiting to go “live”, however, so I won’t end up having stuff sitting around gathering dust. I would have saved myself at least a couple hundred bucks if I had just gone with one of the bigger kits right out of the chute.
thanks for the reply. unfortunately, I don’t have the space. cargo area is taken up for groceries, compressor and woofer box. I have my tank mounted in a spare place just behind the muffler so I’m stuck with this 2gal unless I get a bigger vehicle. probably get a 400C when the 275C gives up the ghost.
sorry for the off topic. 