Frying my finals

BOTH ?

Who told you this and was either radio modified ?

 

The Cobra 150 & 200 are known for finals failing when running them on high power. That's why Cobra stopped making them. But you could have a antenna system problem. Since you burn up both radios.

 

its not the radio, if you have had 2 diff radios do the exact same thing. usually it is high swr that blows finals. check your whole ant system out with a good wr meter, and see what they are, should be under 2.0, preferrably around 1.5. hope this helps.

 

Check everything AFTER the radio.

Are you running an amp? Check the jumpers to the amp. Are you running external swr/watt meter? Check the jumpers to them as well.

Is the amp ok? are the meters ok?

Check the coax to the antenna.

Check the antenna mount and the nylon washers on the mount. Check the condition of the antenna.

I would NOT spend one more dime on another radio until you KNOW FOR SURE all the above is ok.

 

Let me add one more possibility that I have seen before,

I seen a guy mess up his radio finals because he had dual antennas and hit a tree with one. He decided to just remove the broke antenna and leave the good antenna as is,,,,,,you need both antennas hooked up if you have a co-phase harness

 

You're good! Wish we had more like you here! (I remember you from another forum)

 

There are 2 simply ways to have blown finals. Blown finals refers to the power transistors are damaged. This condition will seriously limit your ability to transmit for distance.
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First, operate the radio without having a real cb radio antenna connected. No, you cannot use a rabbit ear TV antenna or something else.
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Second, operate the cb radio with a SWR reading, measured with an external meter, that is 3.0 or higher. Do not trust a meter in a radio.
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A SWR reading on the meter of 3.0 or higher indicates a connection problem. The easiest two things to check are bad antenna and bad coax. Borrow a known good antenna and coax from someone and re-check the SWR using an external SWR meter.
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If it is not the antenna or coax then the problem is the antenna ground plane is faulty.
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Please tell me that you are checking your SWR with an external meter before you operate your radio. Right?

 

Burn-out finals are 99% of the time caused by a bad-peak or tune job. Someone probably attempting to jack things up more than they should have and there you go. The probably tried to volt the finals.