A few weeks ago we received some advice about upgrading Cuthbert’s horn ready for the many blind bends on the narrow mountain-pass roads further north in the Americas. Apparently, on the blind bends in particular, priority of the road will go to the vehicle making the loudest noise. It pays to have the loudest air-horn possible so that any vehicle coming the other way anticipates a very large truck and vacates the road to let you pass. Cuthbert’s standard Iveco horns are basically just car horns and just won’t do the trick. 

We already have an on-board air supply for the air suspension, so we can use this to power the large truck air horn, which we eventually found in a Mercedes spares shop.

The air horn was easy to fit and used the same 6 mm pipe as Cuthbert’s air suspension.  The pipe and push fitting in this size are readily available in the local spares shops of Puerto Montt, southern Chile.  However, we needed a switch to operate the air horn.  Normally on a large truck this would be an electric solenoid valve, but we found three problems with this: (a) they are very expensive (three times the cost of the horn itself); (b) they require a power supply of 24 Volts and Cuthbert has a 12 Volt system; and (c) none of the local stores had one in stock anyway.  Instead I found that small 6mm push-fit taps were available, so I decided to use one of these with a ‘suitable system of leavers and pulleys’ to operate it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cuthbert now has a pull cord above the driver’s door which, when pulled down, activates the air horn.  I can now pretend to be a train driver – honk honk 😉

 

 

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