Horn Confusion

[John Betsch - "SADIE"]

My '65 230SL is missing a horn.  The existing horn's plate indicates 520hz (picture attached) which I am not sure is proper or not.  When researching horns/availability at various sites, the Hz and nomenclature is all over the place including  290/345; 325/400hz etc.

Can someone help with both the proper horn mix and maybe sources

jb
apologies- I have no idea how to flip the pix

[mdsalemi]

John,

Just when you think you know it all, you are corrected. But this is what I know, but I could be wrong. First, it looks like YOUR single horn tag might be from a newer horn than 1966. I believe the horns as supplied (again, I could be wrong) would have a tag similar to this one.

The designations I believe would have been 12/3 and 12/4. (I've also seen tags for 12/9 and 12/10) Maybe that horn tag I have isn't correct. Though original, there are also a LOT of reproductions of tags out there. The 12 refers to voltage and the /3 and /4 refer to tone or frequency and market, too. Bosch made a LOT of horns for a lot of cars in a lot of countries, and many bureaucrats made many rules...

I believe that we had a low and medium frequency horn set? That would be something like 290 Hz (Tief or deep) and a 362 Hz (Mittel or medium). The 520 Hz on your tag sounds very high.
Hopefully others can chime in here.

The horn lives in the worst place possible, the front of the car, close to the ground. The original design was not a sealed design, so it was basically a catch all for all manner of water, salt, road gunk, etc. to work its way in and eventually destroy the horn. There are a number of reproductions and even horns made by Bosch available. If you search on eBay right now there are plenty of horns available, many "original" and as you'll note they all look like crap.

[DaveB]

..starting a new topic as the previous is locked to me for some reason..
John, these on my 1965 are I believe the original

[BobH]

I can only see one horn on my 1965 car, the other label is not legible.  The one i can see is 12/10.  They look old, but i can't say if they are original

[DaveB]

I can only see one horn on my 1965 car, the other label is not legible.  The one i can see is 12/10.  They look old, but i can't say if they are original

Probably is original. It's looking like the 12/9 and 12/10 are what's required but they seem hard to come by. They may have also been fitted to the W110 and W111 cars if you can find one of them parted out.
They do sound great!

[ejboyd5]

It is a bit confusing, but I believe 12/9 and 12/10 were originally fitted to the '65.  They are pricey. How original do you want to be?

[BobH]

There are some 12/9 & 12/10 for sale, i think you need to expect to pay upwards of £ 700.00 plus shipping

[John Betsch - "SADIE"]

thanks everyone.  I see several "bosch" horns for sale designated 325/400hz.  How close would that be to our "12/10, 12/9" as I see  tags of 12/10, 12/9 can e purchased

jb

[BobH]

Sead had some refurbished horns listed, he states the frequencies on here

https://www.sl113.org/forums/index.php?topic=34689.msg254013#msg254013

[mdsalemi]

For those of you (not too many I'd suppose!) who were at one of the PUBs years ago in Blacklick, I talked about my own "restoration" of Bosch horns.

I got a pair from a fellow member here many years ago, functionally they were trashed, but the cases were fine.
I disassembled, and had the cases powder coated and bought a rebuild kit from Stoddard. It was basically tags, screws and not much else.
I cut new paper gaskets out of heavy "oil paper".
I bought a set of SEALED Bosch horns, smaller, and placed them inside the old cases, running heavy duty wire to the terminals.
So they look perfect, from the outside, and being sealed, will last.
Note, because Stoddard deals in old Porsche parts, at the time I did this (2007) the only tags I could find were theirs; they were for 6V horns. Of course my horns are 12V. I have since replaced the tags with 12V proper tags.

Y'all can laugh now, but these things were so darn pretty I could NOT stand to actually mount them on the car! So they are in a box, the Crown Jewels of my Pagoda parts!

What's actually on my car now? I don't know. The restorer got them 20+ years ago. Not original, not hardly--but LOUD.

[66andBlue]

thanks everyone.  I see several "bosch" horns for sale designated 325/400hz.  How close would that be to our "12/10, 12/9" as I see  tags of 12/10, 12/9 can e purchased
jb

John,
W113 horns should have base frequencies of either 290 Hz (low tone) or 345 Hz (high tone), all other frequencies are not original. Unfortunately, not all Bosch Tags show the actual frequency (see photo) and in addition many were added later to existing horns without regard to the actual frequency of that horn or even to camouflaged aftermarket horns. Thus, the tag on a used horn alone should not be used to make a purchase decision.

It is all explained in some detail in two Pagoda World "Toot your horn and smile" articles - PW 19, 2016 and PW 21, 2017 - that Barry Dorr and I put together.

[BobH]

Found this when i was Googling, not strictly applicable to the horns on Pagoda's but there may be some similarities, and makes an interesting read

https://www.alfabb.com/attachments/bosch-ho-fdg-horn-repair-original-v2021-10-08-pdf.1705025/

[Duncan200]

If it makes you feel any better, these are the horrible looking horns fitted on my car, the all black one is how they both looked before I cleaned off a very poor paint job.

I’ve recently purchased some Bosch horns that were silver, painted them black and will eventually fit, I know they won’t be right, but they’ll look better.

Doug

[BobH]

My '65 230SL is missing a horn.  The existing horn's plate indicates 520hz (picture attached) which I am not sure is proper or not.  When researching horns/availability at various sites, the Hz and nomenclature is all over the place including  290/345; 325/400hz etc.

Can someone help with both the proper horn mix and maybe sources

jb
apologies- I have no idea how to flip the pix

Hello John, if your horn is what it says on the label, it may be from a 190SL, you'd need to do some more research, and if it's working could be quite valuable, possibly worth more than a 230SL horn, if you want a matching pair selling your one horn could pay for a pair of period correct horns, just a thought

After looking into this more, advertised 190SL horns are all different, i don't think a lot of sellers know what they're actually selling, some 190 horns have your label and others are totally different.  More research to be done

[John Betsch - "SADIE"]

"And the plot continues to thicken."

 I was able to find the PW#16 article in my volume II of the reprints but Vol 21 (2017) has not been done as yet.  Would anyone have the article about horns in Vol 21 they could possibly scan, email or post

I appreciate everyone help in my search. I think you may wonder why I only have one horn.  When I acquired my car 30+ years ago, there was a set of rallye horns mounted on the drivers side subframe cover area in addition to the single horn.  I removed them, leaving me with one horn.  Later I learned that those rallye horns might have been a popular Germany item (which I have never verified to be true or not) It has taken me thirty years become annoyed with that higher pitch horn.  Hence my project to fix my horns

jb

[John Betsch - "SADIE"]

Would anyone have the article about horns in Pagoda World Vol 21 they could possibly scan, email or post?

[BobH]

Hello John, i would but i didn't join the forum until after this was published, i'm sure someone here can help