Make sure your mount is grounded...mine mount was tailgate mounted and I had the tailgate grounded pretty well. The cb was a Midland cheapo unit which worked out well...then I moved the antenna to a newly installed rack which was not grounded. The Midland was having problems so I replaced it with the unit most of the people I wheel with were using and having success with. The new unit was having problems as well and after running it for a few weeks started getting worst with feedback mostly. So it didn't burn it up but something intern to the board was toasted and it couldn't be tuned and I got it replaced. So while it did have power it really was worthless because people couldn't hear us no matter what we did and on our end...we could see people broadcasting on the meter but we couldn't hear them (similar to a cb not tuned). We got a replacement and had it tuned by a local cb shop who diagnosed our setup and found the grounding of the mount and the cables to be insufficient.

All worked out well until we did the Rubicon in the summer and it too was having problems which WOL determined to be the mic. Sure enough after it was replaced all was well again. So my suggestion would be to start with the easy stuff like grounding of the antenna mount and tuning of the cb but know it is possible to mess up or fry a component on the board if you run it too long without good grounding.

 

SM,
Sounds good. I found a cb shop willing to tune it in but they're an hour south. It's a drive, but may be worth it. I also heard about a local HAM / CB group that meets up in my area. I may stop by one of their meetings and see if someone is willing to teach me how to tune it and sell me an old SWR meter they have. I'm going to check the ground tonight after work. I'm not hooking up the CB until I'm with someone who knows what they're doing. Thanks again for the help. Hopefully I won't have to replace the unit.

Cheers!

 

Pics of the auxiliary fan sensor.