I mentioned back in April, after I upgraded my car’s stereo, that the next upgrades to my trusty Subaru Outback would involve repairing a worn-out hood latch, installing some new horns, and blacking out some of the chrome on the grille. I fixed the hood latch shortly thereafter, which didn’t really justify a post all its own. Then the car needed new shocks and struts (which was expected), and I had to get the paint on the hood repaired due to damage from the ironically-named OEM ‘hood protector.’ Then there was a bit of a shipping snafu with the new horns, a bunch of pre-planned traveling, and a lot of rainy weather . . . so I didn’t get around to the other stuff until this past weekend.
Anyway, I bought a pair of Hella Supertone horns. They come in an obnoxious red color, which is meant to look ‘dramatic’ behind your grille. I find it a bit tacky, but thankfully you can get blacked-out versions of the horns from SubiMods . . . along with a very handy mounting bracket and wire harness. The whole kit was almost stupidly easy to install. The only hard part was getting the bumper cover and grille off the car, which is far more complicated than it ought to be.
While the grille was off the car anyway, I removed the chrome-colored ‘wings’ and Melissa—who is far more talented with paint than I am—blacked them out for me. It ends up giving the grille a bit more of a subtly-aggressive look, as opposed to the overly-chromed flashy look it came with from the factory. I like it.
Read on for some photos, and before-and-after MP3’s of the horn. They’ll give you a good idea of the tone change, but what they don’t really capture is the fact that the horn is now much, much louder than it used to be . . . in part because the Supertones are probably twice as loud as the stock horns, and in part because the stock horns were located behind the bumper cover and the new ones are mounted with a clear line-of-sight through the open grille. Good times.
Stock Subaru horns (before) | Hella Supertones (after)
