is it my setup or is it my century

Well its possible a shorted coax could have taken down your output stage...

 

Well, if you'd rather spend time than money, I'd run the whole shebang over to the passenger mirror just to make absolutely sure it is something going on with the driver's door.

 

No problem. I'd be inclined to try it on the passenger door just so you can be absolutely sure it's something going on with the driver's door, even if you do decide to ground the door better. Sometimes brand new coax can be bad, although it seems highly unlikely that you'd have the same symptom clear up when you open the door with both pieces of coax.

 

Not a good idea to put your antenna on driver side to begin with taking abuse from constant door slamming etc. I always go the passenger side or if you have grab bar on back of cab above window mount it there should still clear trailer so will still get out in all directions. Also I always use stainless steel antenna mounts for mirror mounting. Run grounding wire from bolt on mount directly to frame with SS bolts/washers,sounds like you have that part covered all stainless steel hardware has served me well over the years. But agree with others who said coax will be a good place to start,something is wrong there for sure.

 

Antennas take the abuse from door slamming a lot better than they do from tree limbs at 40 mi/hr.

 

Not if you're a "Billy Big Rigger" and bull dog it so you look cool

 

When i was a 7 year newbie I was still hitting branches and stuff at 40/mph too. It's okay I understand

 

There are situations where hitting stuff with an antenna on the passenger side isn't avoidable, there are roads I've been on going into jobsites that generally don't get trucks on them that have branches hanging out over the roadway on the right side. Admittedly though, I don't go 40mph on those roads. I have one customer in particular that's on a road where I can either drive on the wrong side of the road through a blind curve or hit this pesky branch with my antenna on the passenger side-I run duals and use the passenger side antenna for the stereo. I was just stating the reasoning behind my opinion, that, in my experience, antennas hold up better on the driver's side-I probably do a lot more off-highway driving than most do though, despite my paltry seven years of experience.

But hey, thanks for coming in here and giving advice on a thread that hasn't been updated in over a week-the OP evidently solved his problem without it. You get an "A" for effort. Maybe you should go dig up some more old threads and grace us with some more Monday morning quarterbacking.