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Just remove the bumper cover. Its quick and far easier than trying to squeeze and scrape your hands into tiny spaces. Some short cuts are absolutely not worth it, this is one of them.
Just remove the bumper cover. Its quick and far easier than trying to squeeze and scrape your hands into tiny spaces. Some short cuts are absolutely not worth it, this is one of them.
As per the post above just take the front nose off the car ... The hardest part is getting the car up on either ramps or jacking it up. I just did this a month ago in my driveway as I went over a speed bump and my horns died. The nose is super easy to remove and I am glad I went the extra mile as it also allowed me to clean the radiators reaffix properly my mesh grills and properly replace the horns and give that area a good overall clean. Using a cordless screw gun was an added bonus as removing and reinstalling the screws was a snap. This is a prefect sunny day take a few beers with you afternoon project easy as hell to do.
i tried to replace my low tone horn and i couldn't manage it through the opening on the bottom. after scraping up my hand, and after a long day of other things, i just gave up. i tried the fog light trick but i didn't have the right tools with me, unfortunately.
and actually now, the high tone horn is actually pretty hilarious to me, its like road runner running away.
i do need to take off the bumper at some point to clean out the radiators so that might be when i install the horn.
That's the bumper off. I hate doing it but it's just as well I did. There is absolutely no way I could have got to the high tone horn with it on My cars a turbo, so has the center radiator, which Porsche obviously fitted just to make it impossible to get to the horn. I had to bend the bracket out of the way to get to it.
The good news is that there is power getting to the horns, so it definitely horn failure. New Hella ones on the way.
To determine which horn is not functioning, use a tone generator on your smart phone and compare the tones.. the bass horn is 420 HZ, and the high horn is 510 HZ. I downloaded a free app called PA Tone for Android. Play a tone, then honk. Easy to tell which is not working. Plenty of websites that will generate a tone for you where you just type in the frequency.
To determine which horn is not functioning, use a tone generator on your smart phone and compare the tones.. the bass horn is 420 HZ, and the high horn is 510 HZ. I downloaded a free app called PA Tone for Android. Play a tone, then honk. Easy to tell which is not working. Plenty of websites that will generate a tone for you where you just type in the frequency.
An old thread, but my 997 just failed PA state safety inspection due to low horn being out (I never noticed!). I have a new horn on order from FCP but has anyone found any recent tricks for this? I'm going to try first without removing the bumper but if need be, I have done it before (to clean the radiators and install grilles) so I could do it again.
Don't even try. It's absolutely not going to save you any time - you would scratch up your hands and your car then eventually still need to remove the bumper cover, which is a quick and easy job.
This is me replacing my horn.
Last edited by SpawnyWhippet; 06-09-2023 at 05:12 PM.
I tried to get the horn out via the bottom and fog light access holes and might have succeeded … if the damn nut wasn’t so tight. An hour later I had the bumper off and the horn removed:
The replacement is on the way from FCP but at least I already got the hard part out of the way. Also I was able to remove the wheel liners and front bumper without lifting, just cranked the tires in access the screws for each side.
This weekend while changing oil, I just successfully replaced my low tone horn without removing the bumper, it's definitely possible, but very tight.
Removing all lower Torx screws holding the bumper does indeed just give you enough room to work through that gap to replace the low tone horn. If you're good with using touch to navigate, it's possible to get an average-sized 13mm wrench on top of that nut and loosen it. I managed removal and replacement solely through the lower gap. Two shop towels wedged open the gap to work within. I have thin wrists, I'll admit that, but medium-sized hands. No longer sounding like a clown-car on the road, thankfully.
Bought the cheaper Clarton unit ($22) and to my surprise, the OG unit removed was also Clarton-branded.
EDIT: to add, the opening that is molded into the lower bumper for the horn on a 997.2 is too small to fit a hand into. The only method of replacement is either what I describe above or removal of the bumper entirely.
10-10-2020, 04:11 PM
