I have a RR antenna mounting bracket which is powder coated. I plan to grind one of the two mounting bolts to bare metal and attach a grounding strip there.

I notice that the fire ring has a metal surface on both sides. One relates to the center wire and one relates to the shield wire. Should the metal ring that relates to the shield wire be touching the mounting bracket and should that side of the mounting bracket be ground down to bare metal for good contact?

 

 

The shoulder of the Firering should sit inside the hole in the mounting bracket. To ensure a decent ground, I ran a stranded wire from the body to the Firering and placed the stripped end between the mounting bracket and Firering, before tightening it down. SWR shows an excellent reading at a hair past 1.0. Great signal. If you set it up right, the Firering is a great product.

 

I've seen these pics. I assume that since that bracket is stainless then the fire ring's steel ring is touching and thus grounded. Therefore the coax shield wire is grounded to the antenna mount bracket. Correct?

 

I think mine ended up at or right below 1. No extra ground was needed. Pretty happy.

 

This Diagram shows that the antenna bracket 'G' is indeed grounded to the coax shield wire:

 

Yes the metal part of the ring with the shoulder should you the mounting bracket. If you are solely using the bracket for you ground, you should remove any paint or powder coating. However, the ground may still be questionable. You should run a wire or strap from the body to the mount or shoulder side of the ring.

 

I have that same mount and it doesn't ground for anything. You can grind the inside of the hole but the hole for me was so large I would have had to make sure I bolt it down touching that side where the grind was... not very good contact. Then you also need to grind down the hole for the bolt going into the tire carrier and you will still like need to run a ground wire. I ended up just running a 10 gauge wire with a ring terminal from the bottom of my stud to a ground.

I wouldn't recommend that RR antenna mount to anyone... you have to spend a lot of time modding it to get it to work right... you might as well just make a custom one from scratch you would save money and get better performance

 

Hmm, well I already ordered it but it hasn't arrived. Are you hooking up your antenna to it using a fire-ring or the normal coax attachment. I have the coax with the fire-ring end and it requires a hole that is 1/2". What size is the antenna hole on your bracket? I am expecting a bit of grinding on the bracket so the ground wire will make contact. With the fire-ring system, the inside of the hole is protected by plastic washers so that the bolt doesn't touch the mounting bracket.

 

I am using a pl259/so239 type but I don't see how the fire ring will help the ground issue. I would go ahead and pick up a nice 10-12 gauge wire and some ring terminals to fashion a ground. Even if you grind the holes for the antenna stud and the screw you still won't be getting that great of a ground on the tailgate... You are eventually going to want to run a ground wire...it will work without ground wire but your swr will be in the low 2.0 range.

Is I could do it over I would have made a metal plate, drilled into the stock bumper put the metal plate underneath the bumper and run a ground wire to the chasis... That would have been beter and cheaper... If I upgrade to a steel bumper that is what I am going to do