A10 Horn just about useless!

[Tomo]

Hi All,
Sorry to bring this up again....
My 6v 1960 BSA A10 is running well, however, the aftermarket 6v horn is as much use as a chocolate teapot.
I have no intention of going to 12v as everything works well...apart from the horn.
The engine sound is louder than the horn so is not worth using which is concerning safety wise and most importantly no good for scaring old ladies (joke)!
The current horn is a cheap job from fleabay. Is an Altette worth it?
What are your recommendations/experiences?
Cheers,
Steve

[orabanda]

Easy peasy to fix; just graft a 6V japanese horn inside the Altette casting. DT Yamaha horns are good; cheap, and bright sounding.
Allow an hour if you havent done the maching before.
Cheers,
Richard

[Triton Thrasher]

Never fails.

[berger]

perfect triton thrasher that's just the job my mate had one on his triton.

[Tomo]

Haha TT, I was thinking a bit more high tech! If you can call BSA high tech!
Thanks for the reply.

[Tomo]

Orabanda; I have a cheap Japanese horn at the moment.
I don't have an Altette and was wondering if it was worth getting one. Not too bothered what it looks like it just needs to be louder than the engine.

[Rex]

Altettes aren't cheap but they are rebuildable.
I'd buy another cheap Taiwan horn if I was you, as Altettes are too expensive to gut just for the looks .

[KiwiGF]

Hi All,
Sorry to bring this up again....
My 6v 1960 BSA A10 is running well, however, the aftermarket 6v horn is as much use as a chocolate teapot.
I have no intention of going to 12v as everything works well...apart from the horn.
The engine sound is louder than the horn so is not worth using which is concerning safety wise and most importantly no good for scaring old ladies (joke)!
The current horn is a cheap job from fleabay. Is an Altette worth it?
What are your recommendations/experiences?
Cheers,
Steve

I have rewound a 12v to 6v altette and it worked ok, not great but ok. Basically the copper wire inside can be unwound, cut in half and wound back on the former connected in parallel to make it work on 6v, but I would not bother to do this again.

The basic altette horn can be found on cars made in the same period (morris minors, mgs etc), mainly 12v of course, and without the flashy chrome bezel and nuts, but these “conversion” parts are a (or were last time I looked) available in the aftermarket to convert car horns to bike horns.

Easiest solution is to have a dummy altette 12v horn (blinged up if required) and wire in a modern horn fitted on the bike out of sight, but if you want the authentic sound and/or look it can get expensive……

The car horns I found had “mazak” bezels which polish up nicely (see pic) so I did not go to the expense of buying chrome bezels.

[trevinoz]

If you are going to rewind an Altette, don't try modifying the 12V coil, make a new one, 60 turn of 0.8 mm wire.

[Greybeard]

I kept the Altette but put a cheap modern horn under the tank on the frame.

[Angus]

A10 very cheap 6V horn in the nacelle (very loud but sounds horrible), A7 just replaced after 14 year like for like with a  6V wassel horn part no WWHEL003