Setting up a CB antenna in a daycab 2017 Cascadia.

Discussion in 'CB Radio Forum' started by corneileous, Dec 23, 2024.

  1. corneileous

    corneileous Road Train Member

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    But I don’t want to use one of those mirror mounts most truck stops have.

    What I’d like to do is being that it’s a daycab and doesn’t have the sleeper in the way is use the driver side cab mount but I have no idea how to take that factory mount off the side of the cab so that hopefully after minimum tearing down of the interior paneling, I’m gonna run probably an 8 foot coax from that mount to where the radio goes up above in its factory-made location and while I’m at it, I’m going to attach a ground wire to the factory mount so that I can ground it to the cab in order to be able to set my SWR.
     
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  3. Diesel Dave

    Diesel Dave Last Few of the OUTLAWS

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  4. gummy bear

    gummy bear Light Load Member

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  5. mike5511

    mike5511 Road Train Member

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    Use flat braid for all your bonding (grounding) purposes. Keep those straps under 18". Make sure your antenna mount is attached to bare/shiny metal. Then make sure that side panel is bonded to the floor panel and the floor panel is bonded to the frame.
     
  6. corneileous

    corneileous Road Train Member

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    Well, it helped a little but I sure wish the guy would’ve shown himself taking that mount down.
     
    gummy bear Thanks this.
  7. corneileous

    corneileous Road Train Member

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    I’m sure a braided ground strap would be better but years ago when I drove over the road and drove an 09 sleeper cab version of one of these trucks, being that I wasn’t pushing anymore than the required 4 watts of power out of a stock radio, this was the setup I used and in order to ground the antenna mount, I just ran a single 14 or 16 gauge piece of automotive wire that ran from one of the four bolts on the antenna mount to one of the mirror bolts and was actually able to achieve pretty good results. I think I might’ve gotten about 2 miles range but that was on a plain Cobra 29 with just a 4 foot fiberglass whip. Of course, that big ole sleeper limited my range but it did work good for what I needed.
     

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  8. mike5511

    mike5511 Road Train Member

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    That would be better than nothing, but not near as good as it could be. Depends on what you are willing to settle for I suppose.
     
    corneileous Thanks this.
  9. corneileous

    corneileous Road Train Member

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    Well, I got it figured out today. I just need to wait until another day- probably tomorrow if it’s not raining too hard to tune my antenna now but once I got that plastic cover off- sticking a small flathead screwdriver in the little hole on the bottom did the trick but anyways, to my surprise, there was three torx-head bolts that attached that upside down triangular base plate to the cab so hopefully running a ground wire for it shouldn’t be necessary, especially the way I had to custom-make my mount.

    After removing the original antenna mount from that baseplate,I took one of these and cut the bottom bolt holes off about an 1/8th of an inch below the top bolt holes and then just used some shorter bolts to bolt it to that baseplate after drilling some holes. Then I had to make the middle hole bigger for the PL-259 connector to go through and then I just ran the new coax underneath the upper door seal and behind the A-pillar cover and then pulled the cable through to the compartment where the radio goes.

    Of course, in order to gain access to the inside of the panel where the antenna mount is, I had to pull the bolts out for the upper part of the seatbelt where it bolts to the side of the cab behind the door.

    It was quite a bit of work but I finally got it. I coulda just used the factory-ran coax that went from the diplexer to the original antenna mount but one, I couldn’t do that because they used a poorly-made co-phase coax where they essentially put a single male PL-259 connector on both cables together and two, that funky antenna mont Freightliner made probably wasn’t grounded correctly because they took a one inch by 2 inch long solid piece of aluminum that had a 3/4 inch wide by half inch deep groove cut into it from long side end to end and then after putting whatever they put in that groove that had the antenna mount on the top and the little version of the female PL-259 on the side, they used some kind of melted plastic to fill the groove. The part where the antenna screws in was isolated from the chassis ground like it’s supposed to but so was the part where the cable attaches to was as well.

    Anuwho, I’ll update my SWR readings when I go to tune my antenna.
     
  10. craig_sez

    craig_sez Road Train Member

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    More to it than swr...Dont get hung up on it to believeing the ant set is good and all the power is gettin out...
     
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