Well, I just finished my upgrade from the Schockers to get me some Nathan goodness. Been running the XL’s for a couple of years now. They’re great, don’t get me wrong, but Holy Cow, the Airchimes leave 'em for dead!
As you can see from the photos, I had to break them apart and make my own manifolds to get them mounted, but it hasn’t taken away any of the fury.
I didn’t have a 3-port banjo fitting for the solenoid so I re-used the one I had from the Schockers… which meant I had four ports to fill. You can see one of the schocker horns remains. So does that make it a K3-LA-XL? :rolleyes:
Had one funny thing going on, which I wanted to check with folks here though. First test didn’t come up trumps. Yes it was loud as hell, but didn’t sound like the audio clips you get. Got the front of the car off again today to check the airlines. All horns had a good solid seal against their diaphragm… except the No.2 horn that is. You could blow air through it just with your mouth alone as if nothing was there. Something wasn’t right. They were factory brand new horns too. I undid the top and re-seated the diaphragms and it came good. Anyone seen anything like that before?
Anyway, here’s the install photos (one with covers off and one with covers on - nicely hidden).
Pure eye candy!
So can you hear that shocker horn behind all the chaos? They do make plugs for unused ports in the manifold.
Haha I would call it a K3AX. You’re L went away. lol
That diaphram may have been crooked or wedged in there & couldn’t seat right.
Yup, I reckon you can hear the difference. I’ll take some video soon to post.
That’s what worried me when I installed the Schockers for the first time. They looked like this:
A mechanic told me that a lot of the newer car designs use thermo-fan type radiators which don’t rely on direct frontal air flow (rather sucking the ambient air through from the back). That’s why they build so many cars with fake radiator grills or fully enclosed bumpers these days.
Being old school, I was dubious but I must say I went through two very hot summers with that configuration and I never noticed any temp increase on the gauge. It must make some difference, but it’s probably quite small.
The main thing that worries me with the horns in that position is frontal impact. Even a minor bingle will probably cause lots of damage which you can’t drive away from. Oh well, at least they’ll hear me coming
Hehe… yup, they sure get drowned out don’t they
You can just pick them up an instant before the K3 sound off because they’re electric and therefore quicker to respond.
The missus was a bit timid on the horn button in that video, but she’s been bitten by the bug. As my next project, the Shockers that came out of this are going to go in her car which is a little Suzuki Swift. I need to get some valve stem replacements for the shocker horns though because I ended up using those fittings in this install.
The manifold blocks I made for the K were cut out of Delrin and I threaded the brass stems from the schockers into those blocks and then used the existing 3/8 fittings to connect it all.
You’re L went away. lol
