Stebel Nautilus Compact Motorcycle Air Horn

by Flosser

Product Features

• Loud! 139dB at 4in, 115dB at 6ft.
• Compact horn fits on almost anything

Product Details

• Item Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• ASIN: B000NPRTII
• Item model number: 11690001
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (66 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #32,336 in Automotive (See Top 100 in Automotive)
  • #19 in Automotive > Exterior Accessories > Horns & Accessories > Air Horns

Product Description

Twin tone ULTIMATE BLAST is the latest in horn technology. The Compact designed horn offers a "BIG" sound with the ease of instaltion which allows the unit to be installed where larger horns could not fit.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Horn - Installation tricky, March 18, 2008

By 

Abacrome21 (LA, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Stebel Nautilus Compact Motorcycle Air Horn

I recently was almost run off the road on my Suzuki V-Strom by a driver merging onto the freeway. She was singing to a tune and never looked into the lane she was changing into, which happened to be mine. I blew my horn which had no affect at all. My factory motorcycle horn is about equivalent in volume to a person blowing their nose with a bad cold. My only option was to speed up and get in between her and the car on my left. Once I got clear I was determined to get a new horn.

I received my order in only 2 days using the standard ground shipping option. That was surprising since some of the stuff from Amazon lately has taken 2 weeks to get to me. I also ordered the optional wiring kit which came in the same box. I strongly suggest you get this kit unless you have a garage full of different gauge wires and connectors.

Installation,
It took me 2 hours to install this horn. First it's not small so you have to find a suitable mounting place. Forget about mounting it where the existing hockey puck size horn is. Then you have to buy or fabricate your own mounting bracket because it doesn't come with any way to attach it to the bike. The one screw it does come with is stated in the instructions as having to be torqued to 50 foot pounds. For a horn? There are no written wiring instructions with the horn, but there is with the optional wiring kit. But unless you want to be confused, don't read the instructions and instead follow the wiring diagram which is the same on both the horn and wiring kit. The outcome was good but it took a lot longer then I expected. If you are not good with electrical wiring expect to spend even more time.

Bottom Line:
THIS HORN IS LOUD! It does exactly what it says it does. It corrects what I believe is a major safety flaw on most bike and some cars.

Why not five starts:

It should come with the wiring kit. It's only $10.00. They could add it to the price of the horn and charge less for the combo since it doesn't require separate packages.

It should come with a simple black bracket that would work for the majority of installs.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty loud, but big and installation is tough, July 31, 2008

By 

Brett W. Coon (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Stebel Nautilus Compact Motorcycle Air Horn

After reading the reviews, I expected the horn to be louder. It is pretty loud, but don't expect it to compete in loudness with air horns on cars and trucks. It's also relatively high pitched and musical, so it's not as aggressive of a sound as you might hope. I did a test where I put my video camera inside my car with music playing, and rode by on my motorcycle with the old and then new horns honking. In both cases the horn was tough to hear until the motorcycle was pretty close or there was a pause in the music. That said, on my first ride with the new Stebel, a van pulled in front of me so I honked (having a new horn made me a bit trigger happy). The van pulled off the road and stopped, which is a more dramatic reaction than I've ever had before. Something about the air horn sound just seems to get people's attention.

Installation was a real bugger. I spent many hours hunting for a place to mount it, crafting a mounting bracket, and wiring it up. It's fairly large and heavy, and I wanted it to be hidden by my bike's fairing, so there weren't many installation choices. The wiring kit I bought for an extra $10 didn't include long enough wires to reach from my battery to the old horn (I wired the relay for the Stebel in parallel with my old horn to make both of them useful), so I still had to make a trip to the hardware store for supplies.

Overall, I do think this horn is a worthwhile safety feature, and I'm glad I added it to my VFR800. Just be sure you're up to a big project before starting it yourself.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too large for my application, December 15, 2008

By 

Joel G. Landau "Technophile" (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Stebel Nautilus Compact Motorcycle Air Horn

If you've got plenty of room on your scoot, this is a must have for any motorcyclist.

Unfortunately, it was too large to fit under the flyscreen of my Buell XB12S Lightning (fortunately a friend's Uly had plenty of room). I tried several other install concepts posted by other users, the XBS is just way too small.


I looked at several other horns before deciding on this one.

Pros:
* Great idea
* Loudest on the market, according to my research
* Plenty of user reviews and advice on how to install for many models.

Cons:
* Too small for smaller form factor/compact bikes
* Poor instructions included, not much help on the company's web site
* Additional wiring kit needed for many applications

Better if:
* Better instructions were included
* Wiring kit just came with the base kit
* A smaller version was available, even at a sacrifice of dB