small cb ugrade?

If it were me I'd upgrade the antennas and set the SWR's first, then see if your happy..

Wilsons are a decent antenna and aren't priced too bad..

I had a similar problem with a 660, I got rid of the KW stock antennas and put on some Wilson 2000's, tuned them with my analyzer, then added my Stryker 480HP radio...Head and shoulders better than the stock KW setup.

 

Run a separate co ax out to a bird perch mounted antenna.

Don't matter what - just get off the factory setup.

 

excellent point..

 

The antenna bracket will clamp around your mirror arms on the Columbia, most guys just run the coax cable thru the weather stripping around the door, it wears it out at that point but it doesn't require drilling holes. To replace the coax and route it thru the doors and such is a much neater installation but is not worth it on a company truck, a simple cable out the door will still improve the signal output over the factory wiring. The factory wiring is shared with the AM/FM radio and goes thru a signal splitter plus it has several connections in it where signal loss and noise are introduced. A basic Wilson 2000 or similar antenna with a mirror mount and good coax should not set you back more than $75, with good cable. Get the antenna tuned when it is installed and you should see a dramatic improvement over the factory setup.

Stay away from the "golden screwdriver" peak and tune jobs from the cb shops, most of them will not do anything to increase output and only mess up the radio, not something you want to do. Search for the thread Peak and tune myths on this site, it is a good source of information.

 

From what I've read a single good quality antenna with a single coax will be all you need. Peaking and tuning just adds distortion.

 

Single antenna will be fine, and yes you can use the existing mounts and run new coax. This will be better than leaving the existing antenna on the driver mirror and mounting the new one next to it. Leave the factory antenna on the right side mirror so your AM/Fm radio will still work, Freightliner uses the cb antenna for the music radio reception as well as the cb, that is why they are so bad as cb antennas.