New Antenna is too long, what to do?

The thing to keep in mind when talking about "Bad Grounds" is this. You may have a great electrical connection you may have a ground connection that could deliver 500 amps of current but an RF signal would not see it has a complete circuit.?? This means everything could look really good with an OHM meter and still not be what the RF circuit wants.. The image of how it is mounted could from what I see be just that kind of problem. That is why sometimes grounding an antenna with a random wire that just happens to be around 9 feet long could be good or it could be bad. Imagine an RF signal traveling through a wire at just short of the speed of light which is what it does if you provide a path to ground that is significantly slower than what travels through the coax the it will cause an out of phase condition that can make the grounding useless. The tilting of antennas away from exhaust stacks will somtimes allow an antenna to be tuned because you change the angle of radiation away from the stacks and it changes the levels of reflected RF that's what started some shops tilting antennas. Well when you don't have a surface area large enough to present the antenna with a ground platform that resembles a tuned circuit at the frequency your operating on it can seem impossible to ever get a good match even with all kinds of grounding... Point is some antennas will work much better in these conditions than others another words they are more forgiving of the invirenment they are expected to work in.

All that being said, I see the image of where your antenna is mounted and these kind of rack mounts can be the most notorious for securing a good ground plane. One prob. is the metal it's mounted on has almost no ground plane at all. It may be grounded to the frame, bolted to the frame and welded to the frame of the truck and you may still have nothing more than an electrical or an untuned DC path to ground.. You may try some different length antennas and some antennas with the wire that allows for grounding which turns that antenna into a shunt-fed design sometimes these will make a difference.

I did notice you posted this:::
2. There is a difference between ch 1 and ch 40. 1 is usually around 4, and 40 is about 8.

This may not be a bad thing first I would establish that there is a solid ground by testing the coax with wrapping your hand around it while keying the mic in reflected mode. If that happens to look like the needle isn't moving much at all I would make a small adjustment to the antenna. Even if it's not designed to be tuned you pull the cap find the end of the wire it's wrapped with and cut and inch off making sure you take measurements before and after so you know if there is any change at all even if it's a little. What you want to see is both numbers get lower on 1 and 40 if you see this happen then you should be able to do it again make sure you keep track of the numbers you want to see both numbers on 1 and 40 go down with every cut.. I have done this many times on these kinds of installs on headache racks on trucks with great success..

 

With the SWR reading that far in the RED, I wouldn't...For starters the General Lee's are dual final radios which by them self's with a tuned antenna generate more heat than a regular 4w CB Radio, and with the SWR being that high, it will cause even more heat so you would be taking a chance on blowing your finals in the radio...

I doubt DBT would warranty your radio if you burn it up because of not having the SWR or antenna properly tuned.

 

Yea it's worth a shot, nothing ventured nothing gained. While you are trying it you would first move the tip all the way down and if that moves the SWR in the right direction but still not enough try removing the tip altogether and test the SWR's. If it seems to have a tendancy to show a lower SWR then at least you may be able to use a different antenna with more tuning range possible you may do better with a Wilson 2000 but isn't carved in stone that a w2000 will respond any better..Sometimes you just have to try it.

 

It means that your antenna is now too long. Shorten it a bit. See if you can get the best SWR around channel 20. (A lot of people put lowest SWR at channel 19 for obvious reasons.)