Horn replacement: BMW F800GS and a Stebel Magnum

My BMW stock horn sounds crap. It reminds me of a Vespa or some Kymco scooter noise. Any car going into my lane hears that, and just keeps coming, not a lot of respect.

That was ¨OK¨until I rode a Harley. The air horn they have sound amazing - a profound loud and powerful toot, for a car sounds something like an 18 wheeler coming at you full blast.

So I´ve been looking into how to put a harley air horn on my GS. After some investigating ran into some roadblocks, like the can BUS but more importantly the size of the thing - where & how to mount it on the bike without adding a wierd appendix...

But I found the Stebel Magnum horn:

Which almost fits into the same place as the stock GS horn, and you can connect directly to the CAN bus. This is how it sounds:

Replacement wasn´t that easy, mainly because I was missing a torque wrench extender and couldn´t get the original bolts off. Other than that, pretty straightforward - just needs some pacience in getting it exactly into where the original is. Here a timelapse of the mount:

No car will ignore me now :-)

Something new, something won!

Today I got from the Sena facebook promotion a free SMH10!

It allows me to connect a walkie talkie to the bluetooth system in the helmet! This gives me more autonomy to talk further (up to 16kms depending on the walkie talkie) and I can talk to a car with a wlkie talkie! not bad!!!

I´ll have to test it after the walkie talkies arrive with the move though..... a post to come!

First motorcycle fall in about 10 years....

First motorcycle fall in about 10 years....

Silly fall, I was stopped at a red light. When it turned green i turned to the left when the rear wheel lost traction (didn´t even accelerate that hard), the bike started to fall - managed to keep it in the curve but then it gained traction and spit me off.

Nothing serious happened to me (pride hurt mainly) or to the bike, just a tilted handlebar joint, some scratches and a very damaged fog light. I managed to take her home despite the handlebar behind 20º off. Was repaired in a week.