TurboMinivan
Still plays with cars
- Location
- Lehi, UT
Since I'll be towing to the Rubicon, I thought it would me nice to chat with the group while on the road. To that end, I just bought a(nother) Uniden PRO510XL. This is the same model I have in my Jeep, and that radio has been awesome. I've owned it ~ 20 years and have hard mounted it in at least six different vehicles over the years, and it has never failed to give good performance.
I spent some time mounting it in just the right place in the console. Knowing this would muffle the built-in speaker, I bought a Uniden external speaker and found a nifty way to mount it in the dash, too. I have an old magnet mount antenna which I have used on occasion over the years, so I decided to put it on top of the Suburban's roof; it left just enough cable to comfortably reach the radio.
Once the hardware was more or less ready to go, I began working on the wiring. This is a no-brainer, actually; you just run the negative lead to a ground and the positive lead to a 12v source. For the ground, I used a crimp-on eyelet and attached it to a screw fastened to a steel plate under the dash. For the 12v source, I attached one of those add-a-circuit thingies and went to a switched source in the fuse box. In other words, this is exactly how I have the radio installed in my current TJ and exactly how I've done it in my other vehicles over the years.
When I turn the radio on, all I get is some soft static. It is way too quiet (compared to the radio in my Jeep) for this to be "transmission" static. Indeed, even with the squelch all the way down, there is nothing resembling a signal coming through on any channel. I can walk over to my Jeep parked 20 feet away, fire up its radio, and I hear chatter.
For whatever reason, I am wanting to blame either my voltage source or my ground. Does this sound like something that could be caused by a poor radio ground, for example? Any other ideas for me to explore?
I ran out of time to fiddle with it this morning, or else I would have removed the radio from the Suburban, took it over to the Jeep, hooked up to the same electrical connections as that radio uses (including antenna) and see if anything changes. Unless someone throws out any other ideas, that's my next move.
I spent some time mounting it in just the right place in the console. Knowing this would muffle the built-in speaker, I bought a Uniden external speaker and found a nifty way to mount it in the dash, too. I have an old magnet mount antenna which I have used on occasion over the years, so I decided to put it on top of the Suburban's roof; it left just enough cable to comfortably reach the radio.
Once the hardware was more or less ready to go, I began working on the wiring. This is a no-brainer, actually; you just run the negative lead to a ground and the positive lead to a 12v source. For the ground, I used a crimp-on eyelet and attached it to a screw fastened to a steel plate under the dash. For the 12v source, I attached one of those add-a-circuit thingies and went to a switched source in the fuse box. In other words, this is exactly how I have the radio installed in my current TJ and exactly how I've done it in my other vehicles over the years.
When I turn the radio on, all I get is some soft static. It is way too quiet (compared to the radio in my Jeep) for this to be "transmission" static. Indeed, even with the squelch all the way down, there is nothing resembling a signal coming through on any channel. I can walk over to my Jeep parked 20 feet away, fire up its radio, and I hear chatter.
For whatever reason, I am wanting to blame either my voltage source or my ground. Does this sound like something that could be caused by a poor radio ground, for example? Any other ideas for me to explore?
I ran out of time to fiddle with it this morning, or else I would have removed the radio from the Suburban, took it over to the Jeep, hooked up to the same electrical connections as that radio uses (including antenna) and see if anything changes. Unless someone throws out any other ideas, that's my next move.
