Has anyone done this on their 2010+? If so where did you mount it and did you run into any problems along the way?
Thanks in advance
Sent from my iPhone
Thanks in advance
Sent from my iPhone
I added a pair of ham radios, totaling 5 bands. Next, going to install a Alinco 6 meter mobile on top of the 10/12 meter radio. This is how I did it:
I was thinking of trying something like this setup in mine... Looks great!Here is mine:
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I still haven't moved my mic. I just keep it in the little cubby behind the radio. Works great!Being a SkyWarn weather spotter, I worked like mad to get my Ham Radio installed.
It took me a few days but I finally got my Ham radio installed. Thanks to all of you who went before me and shared your experiences. As my way of saying "thank you," here is how I ended up going about my install.
To get things started I needed a way to mount the antenna. After a lot of research I ended up contacting Babyfat for one of his mirror mounts. Here is the mount painted, installed and wired...
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Getting the coax/ground from the antenna into the cab took a little effort. Just to be sure that I drilled in the right location, I pulled the mirror to get a closer look. I added a grommet and later sealed it up with some silicone just for good measure. As you can see in the picture, the mirror has quite a bit of structural support. I strongly suggest pulling the mirror before drilling just to make sure that you get it right.
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Once you have the wiring through the mirror, passing through the door is pretty straight forward. In this pic you can see where I ended up running the ground wire (later pics were taken before I ran the ground).
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To get the coax into the cab, I just followed the factory wiring...
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...then removed a few T15 screws so that I could open the factory wiring harness and add my coax to the bundle.
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Once I had the coax into the bundle, I ran it with the factory bundle part way into the cab. As you can see in the pic, I ended up popping out of the factory bundle about half way back to the cab. From there, I went through a factory rubber plug and entered the cab. I added some black tape to keep from tearing the boot while I working with the wire that has since been removed.
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Initially I wanted to enter the cab with the factory bundle but this was somewhat problematic. For starters, this is not just a bundle of wires (like you'll find door-side)...
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Instead, it's a solid plug with a quick disconnects on either side. This makes it easy to quickly R&R the door but does create some difficulty when running aftermarket wires. No matter, drilling a hole isn't a problem so I explored that option a little further. The real problem is that there is no access to this wire bundle cab side. In order to get up/back there, you'd need to remove the entire parking brake assembly and to get that removed, you have to remove a bunch of other things as well. Furthermore, even if you do gain access to that location, your coax would need to take a hard 90' turn in a location where the wiring is going to be under (minimal) stress each time you open/close your door, this (I imagine) would significantly shorten the life of your coax. So, I conceded to popping out of the factory bundle and coming into the cab a few inches lower. Even so, I don't think that it turned out too bad. I can certainly live with it.
Anyway, on to the radio. The radio that I installed is a Yaesu FT-8800R that I'm transplanting from my 2003. This time around I decided to install the radio body under the driver's side back seat. Once I removed the seat, the install was simple. I pulled the kick panels from front to back and ran the wires along the channel with the factory wiring.
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Part of the reason that I choose this location was the easy access that I would have to the back of the radio. The FT-8800R has a rear jack that connects to my computer (or another radio) to allow for memory channel sync/backup/restore. I do this often enough that I wanted easy access to the back of the radio. I thought about doing the backseat mod and installing it against the back wall but, in the end, decided against it. This location will work just fine and I never did store anything back there in my 2003 anyway.
When all was said in done, I have exactly the type of access to the radio that I need.
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To get power into the cab, I pulled another factory rubber plug that wasn't being used, punched a small hole and ran my wires. As you can see, I added another wire for a future project that I have in mind. I ended up tucking the wire under the carpet/insulation to get it to the aforementioned kick panel wiring channel.
If you look closely at the top pic, you can easily see where this rubber plug is situated.
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From here it was just a manner of mounting my face plate and speaker. The face plate ended up next to my shifter and my speaker ended up under the dash (down firing, we'll see how I like it there, I can always move it) I'll let the last few pics speak for themselves. They're pretty self-explanatory.
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I just finished this earlier today but, thus far anyway, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Initially I had thoughts about relocating the mic jack away from the face plate but, after getting it installed, I don't think that I'm going to. It seems to work pretty good there.
At some point, I'll have to find a good place to hang my mic though. I'm going to wait on that though, I have a few more projects that I want to tackle before I decide on a final location for that.