Horn = High Beams

[7milesout]

Hey All,

I've thought about this for years, in other vehicles. When I honk my horn, personally, I want my high beams to activated simultaneously. To accentuate my frustration.

I don't do too much friendly tooting. I don't think that's what the horn is for. I'm a patient person, people don't have to react instantaneously to make me happy. But when someone does something dumb, I give them horn. And people are always doing something stupid (like looking at their phone, and generally not paying attention). Anywho...

I was looking at the fuse box. It seems like a somewhat simple affair. Sorry about the crude sketches below, electrons and I don't get along. But this is where I'd need to add a relay if I wanted to make this idea work. Those with some electrical smarts, let me know if this would work. I'm not sure when I may do this, but at least wanted to document it.

The RED lines represent what I would be adding to the existing wiring.

• The first sketch is daylight operation with no lights and no horns activated.
• The 2nd sketch is with the high beams turned on.
• The 3rd sketch is with the horn activated ... the relay pulls in the high beam circuit.

[PityOnU]

I can't say I really use the horn enough to have ever justified putting any thought into this. In addition to the Mirage not exactly being the most aggressive/intimidating vehicle (honking at the ever-present F-150 would be the equivalent of a chihuahua yipping menacingly at a doberman), there's the old addage: if you encounter one or two people who seem unreasonable, they probably are; if everyone around you seems unreasonable, well...

Regardless of the mental state it is coming from, this does seem like a useful mod, actually. Honking the horn is generally when you're trying to get attention. Kinda neat! Your idea of a relay is probably the safest way to go about it. Assuming the circuitry is as simple as what you've put in the diagram, it should work without any real issue. Just make sure to get a normally-open as opposed to a normally-closed relay and you should be set.

An issue that may upset your plans here, though, is that the Mirage may or may not use CAN bus signaling to monitor the status of the headlights and/or horn. If one does and the other doesn't, and if the one that doesn't isn't filtered and injects a ton of noise back into the line, your ECU will end up a very sad panda.

- EDIT -

I guess by using the relay, if the power was pulled directly from the power rails of the battery, then you probably wouldn't have to worry about noise too much... It's an interesting question. I really should make a point of reading up on how CAN bus actually works. For some reason I was thinking of it as working similar to powerline adapters, but a vehicle is DC, not AC, so there must be another principle at play there.

[Mark]

Hey All,

I've thought about this for years, in other vehicles. When I honk my horn, personally, I want my high beams to activated simultaneously. To accentuate my frustration.

I don't do too much friendly tooting. I don't think that's what the horn is for. I'm a patient person, people don't have to react instantaneously to make me happy. But when someone does something dumb, I give them horn. And people are always doing something stupid (like looking at their phone, and generally not paying attention). Anywho...

I was looking at the fuse box. It seems like a somewhat simple affair. Sorry about the crude sketches below, electrons and I don't get along. But this is where I'd need to add a relay if I wanted to make this idea work. Those with some electrical smarts, let me know if this would work. I'm not sure when I may do this, but at least wanted to document it.

The RED lines represent what I would be adding to the existing wiring.

• The first sketch is daylight operation with no lights and no horns activated.
• The 2nd sketch is with the high beams turned on.
• The 3rd sketch is with the horn activated ... the relay pulls in the high beam circuit.

The majority of my horn use is for moving wildlife (deer mostly) off the road. Having the brights come on automatically would not be good. I tend to dim my lights for deer, because of their excellent night vision. Brights just blind them & make matters worst.

Slowing down or stopping is still the most important thing to do. I live in a rural area & may look at this differently, however?

[Fummins]

Just get some train horns.

[7milesout]

Mark - I'm not arguing with that logic one bit. However, bear in mind, with that mod, soon as you let off the hood, the lights return to their original condition. Either back to off, or back to low beam.

I certainly understand about the horn sound. Back when I was at Toyota working in design, the GM of the group in charge of the horn (among other things) argued vehemently with Toyota (Japan) regarding the Camry horn. He insisted it not use a chinsey tweet-tweet (disk type) horn. He won the argument and the Camry got dual shell-type horns. I swiped a part of these horns off a Camry that was about to be crushed (post testing), and attached them in parallel to my Corolla. So the Corolla had 3 tones. That was a great horn combo. I wish I had removed those horns when The Warden destroyed that Corolla. Oh well.

I may play with this horn mod on my Ram truck. I've got a mod on my Ram that let's me run the fog lights with the high beams ... I've always loved that mod.

[7milesout]

Just get some train horns.

Would love to. But don't like the idea of finding a place to mount, and the plumbing associated with a pump and reservoir tank.

[daleWV]

I think I would save adding the complexity of additional relay circuit and simply run a diode from the horn relay coil to the high beam relay coil. With the anode of the diode connect to the horn relay coil and the cathode connected to the high beam relay coil. When activating the horn, current would also flow through the diode to the high beam relay coil. When activating the high beams the diode would block current flow to the horn relay coil.

[7milesout]

I'm going to have to go back to school to figure out what you said. Anode of the diode? Is that a typo? If not, it's over my head. I'd like to see a sketch if you would / could make one. It does sound mo' bettuh.

[daleWV]

The arrows on the drawing show the current flow down through the horn relay coil, and over through the diode from the (A)node to the (C)athode and on through to the high beam relay coil when the horn button is closed. When the high beam switch is closed the current only flows down through the high beam relay coil, the diode blocks current flow over to the horn relay coil, since current can only flow one direction in the diode (from the anode to the cathode).

I hope this drawing and description helps 7milesout.

[7milesout]

Yes it does. That is quite simple. Where can I find me a diode that can be terminated to ~18 awg wire?