Installed my stock cobra 29 in my peterbilt last week (while I was waiting on my Galaxy to be tuned). Noticed when I key up the mic my rpm and speedo bounce all over the place which cause the loss of traction light to come on. Using a wilson 2000 mirror mount as far away from the cab as possible. I was going to run a ground to the antenna until I found that the bars that hold the mirror have a factory ground wire running to them. I installed my Galaxy the other day and it is doing the same thing except now the abs warning comes on as well. I cannot go to crazy to remedy this issue because it is a company truck so doing any major rewiring would be out of the question
Is this caused by something in the power wires feeding the radio? Or something to do with the coaxal? The coaxal is ran thru the ceiling above the dash (same place the factory had ran the original coaxal) and there is a whole mess of other wires (not related to the CB). The radios both transmitted and received fine the only issues that are present are directly related to the trucks gauges.
Would running the coaxal between the windshield and dash (to get away from the whole mess of wires in the ceiling) stop this from happening?
The most important question of all. Can this interference cause any damage to the truck? Or cause an important system in the truck to shut down while driving which would be a major safety issue for me and everyone else on the road?
gauges all over the place when I key up mic
Discussion in 'CB Radio Forum' started by nshore harleyguy, Mar 30, 2014.
-
-
Trucking Jobs in 30 seconds
Every month 400 people find a job with the help of TruckersReport.
-
Could be either, both or just EMF from the radio itself. I suspect you have electronic gauges which are quite common. All radio's put electricity "in the air" through the antenna. Back in the day radio shops would sell little lights that went on when you transmitted powered only by the RF power going through your antenna. Are you running any power, even a MOSFET upgrade will cause more RFV power to go into the air.
OK, it's a company truck.... Can you run power right to the battery? Staying out of the fuse box may help. As far as the antenna goes... Are you using a high quality coax with a good shielding percentage. Lots of antennas. even some of the better brand names, cut cost by using less than the best coax. Better grounding of the antenna itself is good for several reasons. Lastly unwanted "harmonics" from a poorly tuned or modified radio can cause all kinds of issues. It's one of the reasons that some radios can be heard through all types of electronic devices.
If you are running an amp, you may have a real problem. Many of the usual 10M / CB amps commonly seen today are not "clean". They create all kind of harmonics and interference. If you can hear your transmission through your toaster, you know you got a problem! LOL! -
Thanks. The Galaxy has duel mosfets and is tuned up. I was gonna go with the rfx 75 upgrade as well but don't need that much power. The problem was happening as well with my stock cobra when I had it in there. It looks like the factory ground is directly tied in next to the fuse box on the drivers side so that could be a small part of the problem but it appears I narrowed down the problem.
I ran my coax (decent stuff not some thin radio shack junk) were the factory coax was ran thru the headliner (there is a whole mess of wires up there around my coax and it runs right next to my fuse box in front of the drivers door). Today I ran a separate coax out of my door to the antenna on the mirror and there was no gauge interference. So I will be relocating my antenna to the passenger side mirror. And see how that works. I hope I can run it thru the factory location thru the headliner cause I like it to look clean and not have wires all over the place. I hope since there are not really any wires up there on the pass side and no fuse box the problem will go away -
What year pete?
Well that really doesn't matter to answer your question because you need to do two things in this order -
1 - ground the antenna, that factory ground isn't good enough
and if there is still a problem,
2 - get new coax, not cheap stuff but decent stuff.
As for the safety issue ... maybe. It all depends on how bad the RF leakage is. -
It's a 2011 386. The coax is good quality coax I just ran it thru the stock location (i know better than using a good radio and decent antenna with junk coax.) Which happens to run right next to the fuse panel and thru the headliner er with a whole mess of other wires all around the coax But I figured I would give the factory ground a try. I did isolate it so I am going to try and relocate the antenna to the pass side. I will be running a new ground (figured I would give the factory ground a shot but since it is grounded basicly at the fuse panel I will def. Be running a new 1
-
Your shield is radiating. You need to put a choke on the coax outside the truck.
Get a jumper of RG-58 or 8X 6to 10 feet long, and make a coil about 4" in diameter. (Better yet, go to the truck stop and buy the 9' pack of RG-8X; it's pre-coiled.) Put a few wire ties on it to hold it together, leaving about 6" of wire free on each end. Connect that directly to your antenna, and the existing coax attaches to the coil with a barrel connector. My bet is that the problem with your gauges is gone.
This will affect the SWR, since you are now forcing the antenna to be the antenna, and not allowing the coax to "help" it. The problem is that half of your signal was bouncing around in your dash, and not going out over the air.Dark_Majesty_06 Thanks this.
Trucking Jobs in 30 seconds
Every month 400 people find a job with the help of TruckersReport.