CB install

StG58

StG58

TJ Guru
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Orygun, the wet side...
I received a Uniden Pro 520XL for my birthday from youngest daughter and her husband. The rest of the install kit was up to me and I ordered up the Arizona Rocky Road spare tire carrier antenna mount, the ARR TJ radio mount, the Firestik firering RGB 18' cable, an swr meter and a Firestik II antenna.

Have a couple of questions on finishing off the install correctly and need the advice of experts. The plan is to run power directly from the battery to the CB, but a quick disconnect in the power lead (and negative lead) on the ARR radio mount would be nice. What would be a suitable connector? Should the negative lead for the radio be run to the battery as well? Any advantages or disadvantages?

Second, and probably more importantly, setting up the antenna ground to the body. Should I try to find a grounding strap that will reach from the antenna mount to a good ground on the body or could a heavy gauge wire be run from the antenna mount to a good ground on the body. If the heavy gauge wire would work, should the insulation be stripped from the wire? It seems that the radio signals travel along the outside of the grounding strap on the ground connection from what I've read. I guess that another option is to bond a traditional ground strap to the tailgate and then to the body. Then make sure that the antenna mount is well bonded to the tailgate. Expert advice would be most welcome here.
 
I didn't have to ground my antennae on my tire carrier. Check swr to see if you need to, also how long was your antennae?


1998 Jeep TJ sport
Named- The Black Banshee
 
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black_bansheetj said:
I didn't have to ground my antennae on my tire carrier. Check swr to see if you need to, also how long was your antennae?


1998 Jeep TJ sport
Named- The Black Banshee
Click to expand...

Still missing one part for the install. The USPS sent my antenna mount to the post office two towns over, and it may take awhile to get here. I've got a pile of CB parts on the reloading bench right now. Uniden 520XL, Firestik FSII 3' antenna, Firering 18' antenna cable with the small end on it (forgot the name of it), Arizona Rocky Road CB mount, Workman SWR meter, misc wire. Still have an Arizona Rocky Road antenna mount lost in the USPS system. Once that gets here, we'll see what I need to do to connect the antenna to the ground plane.
 
It's true that the antenna itself should not be grounded but grounding the antenna's mount is critical to the good operation of the type of antenna we typically use on our Jeeps. The ONLY type of antenna that does not need its mount to be grounded is a no-groundplane antenna like is used on vehicles that don't have a groundplane available, like a fiberglass boat or similar. A NGP antenna is a very poor choice for our TJs, they just don't work very well at all.

For the FireRing mount, make sure first that it is facing the right direction so its raised part faces the mount. Then make darned sure the mount is bare metal where the fire ring touches it, and there is a bare metal connection between the mount and what it is bolted to. That is critical or the antenna won't work well or tune up properly so it has a good low SWR which means it will put out as much power as the CB is capable of transmitting with. Rockyroad's antenna mount comes powder coated which means you'll have to scrape the powder coating away from where the Firering touches it, and where it bolts to the Jeep. If you don't want to scrape paint away from the TJ where the mount is bolted to, you'll need a length of "braided ground strap" wire to run between the mount and a good ground point on the TJ. No, a regular wire won't do for that job.

This is braided ground strap...

HT1J8pmFH8aXXagOFbX5.jpg


Also, make sure to buy or borrow a SWR meter for the antenna installation (edit: you now have one). The SWR meter is what you need to set the antenna's tunable tip to the right length, and it shows how much power is getting out to the antenna as well. SWR meters are not expensive, you can buy one that will do a good job for <$20 at Fry's or Amazon.com. They're great for making sure the antenna and CB is working properly. Basically turn the tuning screw maybe a half-turn between SWR checks until the SWR is at its lowest point. Don't spin the screw too far between tests, you may miss that lowest SWR setting.

Lastly, placing the protective vinyl tip cover back onto the antenna slightly de-tunes the antenna which raises the SWR somewhat. You can fix that problem by tuning the antenna with the cap off to one side of the lowest SWR (raising it slightly), on the side that causes the SWR to go back down when the cap is put back on the top of the antenna. In other words, you're going to slightly mistune the antenna so when you place the vinyl tip cover back on it will mistune it in the opposite direction which will bring the SWR back down to its lowest point. It's kind of a trial and error process that takes just a few extra minutes.
 
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Thanks @Jerry Bransford ! I was hoping that you would chime in here.

On that braided ground strap...I guessing that a truck stop or CB shop would have those. Can I ground the mount to the tailgate, and then ground the tailgate to the rest of the body? Or should I plan on running the ground strap from the mount to the body?
 
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StG58 said:
Thanks @Jerry Bransford ! I was hoping that you would chime in here.

On that braided ground strap...I guessing that a truck stop or CB shop would have those. Can I ground the mount to the tailgate, and then ground the tailgate to the rest of the body? Or should I plan on running the ground strap from the mount to the body?
Click to expand...
Braided ground strap isn't hard to find. Fry's, Home Depot, Radio Shack, ham or CB shops, etc. all carry it. Some automotive shops carry it too, but it doesn't need to be huge like would be appropriate for a battery strap.

Where to ground it becomes a bit more difficult to offer advice on. You can't trust the tail gate to be well grounded due to all the paint that is under the mounting bolts. I'd probably fish the braided ground strap around/through something so it could be grounded to the tub. A good ground (actually called an RF ground since it is for radio frequencies) is really important to your antenna's mount so do what you can and it should turn out fine. :)

All this is why I always try to mount antennas on the tub instead of the tailgate whenever possible... it makes it a lot easier to get a good ground.
 
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Thanks again Jerry! I'll let evryone know how it turns out and what the final solution is. I have read that the tailgate mounts aren't optimal for CB antennas, but wanted to get the thing off the corners of the tub.

Edited to add: USPS got the rest of my stuff for the install delivered. Whoo-hoo! Now for the install.
 
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Here's the gear for the CB install.
CB parts.jpeg


Decided to start with the antenna and mount. First up is clearing the powder coat off the bottom of the mount where the antenna goes.
 
Mounted the Arizona Rocky Road antenna mount on the back of the Jeep today.
Antenna Mount.gif

Here is the mount on the tailgate. The four bolts that hold the third brake light need to be removed and the brake light mount tilted out of the way to get the antenna mount on the spare tire mount. The three bolts that hold the top of the spare tire mount are removed and then reused to mount the antenna mount. It's pretty easy to run coax cable along side the stop light wiring if you use a fire ring coax with the mini-uhf adapter on it. The cable fits inside the wire protector nicely and feeds through the holes with no issues.

Wiring into tailgate.gif


Here the wires are poked through the existing wiring hole. The Rocky Road mount comes with a nice grommet that fits well. You will probably end up using it as the factory grommet didn't fare to well when I removed it to insert the coax.

Wire poked through tailgate.gif


Here is the wires poking through on the inside. You'll have to push them through one at a time, but it's pretty easy to make them all fit.

Wiring out of tailgate.gif


Cut a notch in the top of the existing wiring cover. I played around with running the coax over, under and out the end and decided that this was the best rout to go. It keeps the coax from getting hung up and pinched when you close the tailgate. Leave yourself enough slack so that the tailgate can open all the way.

Road Ready.gif


Here it is with the antenna mounted, the spare tire back on and ready to hit the road. That's a 3' Firestik II. Looks like it will work out nicely. Jerry is right. Getting a good RF Ground with a tailgate mount is going to be interesting. That's up next. Dug out the Fluke meter and was checking for continuity six ways from Sunday. The antenna is insulated from the mount where it is supposed to be, and grounds to the mount where it is supposed to be. The mount on the other hand needs some work. There is a lot of paint and insulation to deal with. I've decided to go with an RF Ground strap from the mount (on the right side mounting bolt) to the body inside.
 
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Nice installation job. Hopefully you ground off some of the powder coating on the mount, like underneath where the Firering touches it, as shown here. The drawing doesn't show you Firering mount but it shows where to grind the powdercoating off from the bracket.

ant-mount grind away location.JPG
 
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Why off the tub? It's not so much off the tub as off the corners of the tub. A lot of the trails I drive are way overgrown skid roads, not much wider if at all than a TJ is. Anything hung on the front half or off the back corners takes a real beating. An antenna on a normal behind the tail light mount will pretty effectively remove both the tail light and the antenna. For that matter the tail lights, and fender flares should be concidered expendable. The best bet is a rear center mount. Around here narrow and low is the way to go.
 
Alrighty then, the CB is installed and tuned. The Arizona Rocky Road mounts for the antenna and the CB turned out nicely. The antenna mount gets the antenna up above the spare tire and puts most of the 3' antenna's winding's above the roof line. The CB tuned to a Standing Wave Ratio (SWR) of just over 1.1 on channel 1, 1.2 on channel 20 and just under 1.3 on channel 40. That is going to get revisited later, but it's close enough for the girls I run with right now. The reception is clear and almost static free. I did have to run a radio frequency ground from the antenna mount to a good clean body ground on the tub. All in all, I'm satisfied with the antenna installation. It's tucked back where it needs to be,the antenna is positioned correctly and it is a solid mount.

The Arizona Rocky Road CB mount went in without a hitch, though there were some surprises getting wires run. I thought that the wires could be run down the trim pieces that cover the windshield lap welds. That was not the case. There is just not enough room to get the wires and the seam back under those trim pieces. The power and ground wires were run under the padding on the sport bar back to where the speaker wires for the sound bar were run, down the roll bar and up the existing wire-way. There is a factory ground connection that I grounded to, and the power wire was run to the power connection on the factory fuse box under the hood. I installed two weather proof bullet connectors for the power wires, one where the wires go into the CB mount and one next to the back of the CB. The CB is easy to remove and the CB mount can be removed without having to deal with a bunch of hanging wires.

The whole setup looks clean and seems to run well.
.
 
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Just thought of one more thing to add to the list. When you're out getting wiring and connectors and such, pick up two 7/16" x 2 1/2" long bolt, four washers and two 7/16" wing nuts. Those make fastening the ARR CB mount to the sport bar a lot easier and cleaner when the door surrounds are removed and the top is down. The 3" bolts supplied are just a hair to long for my taste. The four washers will allow the mount to sit just flush with the support bar padding if you put them between the sport bar and the mount tabs.
 
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Hahaha...a side view would have worked, but thank you! Still trying to decide where to mount one.
 
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