Around 5 months ago, I was driving through a parking lot and hit a deceivingly shallow puddle. The water had enough force to go up into the lower grill area and pop the pre-refresh nose cone off. That part snapped back on and there didn't seem to be any other damage at the time....
Until I needed to audibly alert another driver that the lane I was currently in was occupied and, no, they could not just "Jesus take the wheel" over without signaling / looking / slowing / or otherwise safely and correctly lane-changing. What I heard next, but certainly not loud enough for the other driver to hear, was the sound of a small Italian Vespa scooter honking it's polite horn at a passing pedestrian. That's about the time when it dawned on me, while I'm driving off the road to avoid the other driver, that water must have gotten up into the horns themselves and refused to leave.
Over the next few months, the horn would vacillate from Vespa to non-functioning and back again so I decided to research replacements. The reason for this post is there doesn't seem to be a lot of information regarding horn replacements on a Tesla, and for good reason as you'll see below.
The OEM horns themselves are standard "conkshell" style horns, but at least in the pre-refresh, they are halfway mounted inside the center airbox/radiator housing, while their connections are outside of the box. For the life of me, I could not manage to extract the damaged horns without taking off the whole front bumper/radiator/airbox.... so I didn't. I took the front basin out and double checked my clearances, and voila, satisfactory horn repair. I used the included metal arm attachments and simply mounted them to the back of the existing horns. Now they are outside the airbox, but behind all the cooling mechanisms, so hopefully they won't suffer from liquid intrusion this time. Existing wiring connections mated to the new horns perfectly.
Of course they unscientifically sound louder now, but then again, anything would sound louder than a Vespa**....
Parts:
FIAMM 72112 Freeway Blaster Low Note
FIAMM 72102 Freeway Blaster High Note
**Vespas are cool, and there's nothing wrong with them or their horns. They are perfectly adequate for their usage scenario.
Until I needed to audibly alert another driver that the lane I was currently in was occupied and, no, they could not just "Jesus take the wheel" over without signaling / looking / slowing / or otherwise safely and correctly lane-changing. What I heard next, but certainly not loud enough for the other driver to hear, was the sound of a small Italian Vespa scooter honking it's polite horn at a passing pedestrian. That's about the time when it dawned on me, while I'm driving off the road to avoid the other driver, that water must have gotten up into the horns themselves and refused to leave.
Over the next few months, the horn would vacillate from Vespa to non-functioning and back again so I decided to research replacements. The reason for this post is there doesn't seem to be a lot of information regarding horn replacements on a Tesla, and for good reason as you'll see below.
The OEM horns themselves are standard "conkshell" style horns, but at least in the pre-refresh, they are halfway mounted inside the center airbox/radiator housing, while their connections are outside of the box. For the life of me, I could not manage to extract the damaged horns without taking off the whole front bumper/radiator/airbox.... so I didn't. I took the front basin out and double checked my clearances, and voila, satisfactory horn repair. I used the included metal arm attachments and simply mounted them to the back of the existing horns. Now they are outside the airbox, but behind all the cooling mechanisms, so hopefully they won't suffer from liquid intrusion this time. Existing wiring connections mated to the new horns perfectly.
Of course they unscientifically sound louder now, but then again, anything would sound louder than a Vespa**....
Parts:
FIAMM 72112 Freeway Blaster Low Note
FIAMM 72102 Freeway Blaster High Note
**Vespas are cool, and there's nothing wrong with them or their horns. They are perfectly adequate for their usage scenario.
