OK lads, quite a few questions have been asked on how to fit horns, so I did the honours and put a new pair in the car the other day, and took some pics.

From out the box, to up and running, it took 3hrs, that's including lunch, fag breaks, and 20mins trying to mind the camera :)

The HLCDs in question are the new CD2M drivers, coupled with the older CD1E mini guide. This is not standard, but the CD1E has a slightly shallower mounting depth of about 5in when coupled with these drivers.....that and I like the dispersion pattern on these guides.

OK, here we go, here's a pic of the componant parts

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/Parts.jpg

here we can see the wave guides/horns at the top, moving round the instructions (rtfm;)), one of my infamous pink painted tools (stanley knife), a pair of compression drivers, some bolts, more bolts, and some fixing strap.

Fist things first is to get the wave guides cut down to fit in the car. These horns are designed to be coupled to the bottom of the dash, the dash helps guide the soundwaves up so the bounce off the windscreen at your face. The important area of the hrn is the 'mouth', this area cannot be cut, but the rest of the facia can be trimmed to length.

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/Driver%20side%20dash.jpg

here's the driver side dash, with the speaker cable ready and wating, this is a Bora, and the dash goes very low, but it's not a problem.

With horns it's important to get them in the car as far forward and as far outwards as possible. Because of this the kick panels are often trimmed to get them out further (same as is done when making kick pods, but it's not imperitive), in this case I'm not. the important thing to note is that we cut the minimal amount off, so from a cosmetic point of view they run the full length of the under dash.

So here's a pic of them held in place, notice we place the toe againt the centre consol:

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/RHS%20inital%202.jpg

and then mark how much needs cutting off on the outer side, this will then be measured, and cut off the other end, you can just see the little mark I have made at the end of the dash:
http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/RHS%20Inital.jpg


this is then repeated for the passenger side with the other guide. Remeber to mark which one is which;)

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/LHS%20Inital%202.jpg

Now we go back into the workshop, the marks are measured and transfered to the other end of the horns:

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/Horn%20mesure%20for%20cut.jpg

and then cut with whatever you have, I used a mitre saw and a jigsaw:

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/Horn%20cutting.jpg

Once both horns have been trimmed it's time to take them out to the car for another fitting, once they are about right we need to mount the drivers and carry on.

ok, so they are now roughly the correct size, lets get the compression drivers on the horns. the compression driver are supplied with bolts, which are screwed into the drivers, and then attachedto the horns with nuts. These nuts allow for strapping to attached at the back, but we'll get to that later.

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/Driver%20bolts.jpg http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/Driver%20on%20horn.jpg

Now it's back out to the car for final measuring up and trimming to final length. All done, great, now lets mount these babies.

Ok, so mounting the horns. what's required here is for a bracket to hold the compression driver, the heavy bit, and a couple of bits of strapping holding the front of the horns, on at each end.We are trying to get the horn parallel to the ground, and perpedicluar across the car. we can fine angle them later.


We'll look at the RHS mounting first:

Firstly we shall mount the front of the waveguide. VW have been their usual helpful selves and there are three screws along the leading edge of the dash. So we can simply take some strapping and screw it into these:

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/Strapping%20close%20up.jpg

Here we can see two pieces of strapping, one for each end of the horn:

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/car%20031%20(Small).jpg

So now onto the back of the driver. First we mount the horns in place and have a look at the where the compression driver is:

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/RHS%20Driver.jpg

Unfortunately this isn;t the greatest photo, but if you remember how the driver was mounted, you can see in this pic one of the lugs which were used when boltingthr driver to the horn. On the other side is the nut, so we'll get some straping on there. So we grab some of the supplied strapping, and cut a chunk off, and drill the holes out a bit to give us some tolorence:
http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/Driver%20bracket.jpg

now we bend it into shape as best we can, drill and screw it to the kick panel, and then undo a nut on the compression driver, slip the bracted over this, and tighten up. here's a pic after screwing in place, but before bolting to the compresison driver:

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/Driver%20mounting.jpg

And the RHS side is done:

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/RHS%20Fitted.jpg

Now onto the left side. The left side of the car has the same handy underdash screws on the laeding edge, full marks to VW again :)

However, because of the differences in kick panels on the Bora, the lhs one is not so easy for the rear mounting, it could still be done, but as it happens I have already mounted some brakets here from a previous application, so saved a job.

As before, the front of the driver is mounted to the under dash, and the rear inspected for suitable mounting points. in this case we are moutning to the wheel arch, so we need to put a slit in the carpet to expose the metal. We then mark for holes and drill some 6mm holes. You'll notice the pic is of the RHS, even though we are talkign through the LHS, but these few photo's are taken from a previous set, so please bear with me.

Ok, so we drill and fix some brackets to the wheel arch:

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/Driver%20Bracket%20wheel%20arch.jpg

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/wheel%20well.jpg

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/LHS%20Strapping.jpg

Then we simply bolt the driver onto the strapping as before.

and the lhs side is done as well :)

http://www.nearfieldaudio.co.uk/photo/Small%20Horn%20Fitting/LHS%20Fitted.jpg

Excllent, so there we are, a pair of horns all installed, that took me around 3hrs, including tea and fag breaks, and lunch, and ttrying to remember to take photo's as well...now, no-one can say kicks are simpler than that :D

Excellent stuff :)

Looks much easier than I initially thought too!

Ah, good. Nice to know I installed mine correctly :)

:eek: :eek: holy mother of god, that would drive me mad fitting those :clown:

Those must have been some long tea and fag breaks ;)

Maybe I'll resport to horns if I can't get my centre imaging sorted out... or maybe not :)

A true master at work :)

I'm glad you find it so easy Matt, your vast experience will be handy when you fit mine :D

HB

another excellent diy thread heading for the faq/tutorial section ;)

Thanks lads, next up we have 'Anatomy of a HLCD', and 'HLCDs..Why should I' :)