New to CB's

get a new antenna and coax (the cable between the radio and antenna) "tune ups" are fine but be careful some shops frig with a bunch of stuff inside the radio and charge you a bunch of money. As for the one antenna there are a lot of mixed opinions on one or two, you can get a coax that splits from the radio so you can hook up two antennas. For what you are looking to do I would just stick with the one, maybe stick another one on the other side for looks, as for the type anything new would be a help, but as with most things you get what you pay for.

 

Check to see if the ant. Also gvoes to the am fm if it does get a ant. For the cb those 3 way ant's are not as good as a cheap cb ant.

 

Turn your squelch and RF gain up.

 

Always hold down the mic, even if you don't want to speak.

Don't listen to me.

 

Sandal0906, before you go spending your hard earned money on gear, I strongly suggest that you find out your SWR reading. So that you have a valid starting point for troubleshooting.
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If you have an SWR reading (using an external SWR meter) that is really high, like between 3.0 and pegging the meter, it is possible that you have already damaged your power transistors in the radio. Without the power transistors (some people call them "the finals") you could only transmit very short distances such as less than a half mile. If the SWR reading is really high then you need to have the radio checked out. At least you would know if the radio is sound or not.
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Hopefully, your problem is simple and inexpensive to fix. If the SWR reading is below 3.0, is it possible to borrow a known good antenna from another driver to test on your truck? Does that signigicantly improve your range? If a different antenna solves your problem, I personally would leave the radio alone. I would not peak and tune or anything else. The radio should last many years if nobody screws with it.
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When you talk about antenna and watts, the manufacturer of the antenna is describing how many watts of transmitted power going into the antenna that antenna can handle. The legal limit for a CB radio is 4 watts of power. Now if you are running a linear amplifier, which is illegal, the power going into the antenna is much greater than 4 watts and you can transmit much farther distance. Put lots of watts to a "standard" antenna and it may melt the antenna. Not good.
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If you are running a legal 4 watt CB setup and put 4 watts into that "standard" antenna, it works okay. But 4 watts into the antenna gets you 4 watts of output. It is impossible to put 4 watts into the antenna and get hundreds or thousands of watts of output. There just ain't no way.
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Same for coax. If you are running a linear amplifier, you need more expensive coax that can handle that power.
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Without a linear amplifier, lots of antenna's work okay and RG58 or RG 8x coax, for a single antenna setup, will be completely satisfactory at much less cost. At the short length of coax you will be using in a truck, signal loss is not really a significant issue. If you had a base station with 100 or more feet of coax between the radio and the antenna, that is a completely different story.

 

You guys could confuse Confusious !!!!!!!!!!