"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote in message
...
On 7 Apr 2005 05:14:34 -0700, jim rozen
wrote:

From the motorcycle NG, a clever approach to folks who fail
to notice motorbike riders:

http://home.goldrush.com/obsoelyt/Horn1.jpg
http://home.goldrush.com/obsoelyt/Horn2.jpg
http://home.goldrush.com/obsoelyt/Horn3.jpg
http://home.goldrush.com/obsoelyt/Horn4.jpg
http://home.goldrush.com/obsoelyt/Horn5.jpg

From a locomotive, apparently.

Oh, yeah, it's a set of Nathan Airchime horns, nice clean install...
But there's one huge problem with this, something you don't see in the
picture - Where in the hell is the driver of this little bike going to
get enough air to drive these monsters?

Unless he converts two cylinders of the engine to air compressors,
and has air tanks hidden in both saddlebags, the most he's going to
get out of a standard electric horn compressor is a burp out of one of
those three horns.

You want to drive that sucker, the bare minimum you need is a
modified York AC compressor driven with a starter motor like this:
http://www.onboardair.com/trailhead.htm
And you need at least 6 gallons of air tank to smooth the pulsations.

Of course, now you need 200A at 12VDC to drive the compressor, which
the average motorcycle battery isn't going to provide for more than a
few seconds, and the 30A lighting-coil alternator windings will take
forever to refill it...

-- Bruce --


Actually, not that hard at all -- get one of the small scuba tanks (they
used
to have 38 cu. ft tanks -- about the size of a fire extinguisher (some
smaller
ones also available)) and the first stage of a scuba regulator -- that drops
2250psi down to about 130 psi (you can adjust the pressure). Not good
for a lot of "honks", but should work good for some anyway.

mikey