Thanks guys. With some fine tuning I got it between two and three I will try the strap to get it lower.

 

any gauge wire will do. just use around the same size as the orange one in the picture. make sure to sand around where you drill the hole to expose bare metal to get a good ground

 

If you try a multimeter you'll find that the tailgate is NOT grounded to the rest of the Jeep. Run a ground wire and you'll get a SWR of 1-1.5.

Guaranteed. Don't jump to blaming the antenna until you've checked everything with a multimeter.

 

If you're using a firestik or firefly get yourself a solid metal cb antenna quick release and/or a mount spring.

You can have the best ground on earth but those antennas are tuned short enough to require the extra accessory. Any CB shop (see your local truck stop) sells them, as well as Walcott cb.

Mine was tuning to 2 or 3 without these items, and I've got a killer ground connection. Added the spring and the quick release and voila! SWR 1.2.

Same thing happened with a buddy and his TJ. He has a Firestick and a 75w and we ran a big ground strap and tuned and tuned and couldn't get below about 2.8. Then I remembered the mass of the quick release, and I quickly let him borrow mine, and now he has a SWR of 1.1 on channels 1 and 40, and barely moves above 1.0 on ch. 20.

Change the two letter "x" in "hxxp:" below to a pair of letter "t" for the link to work:

hxxp://www.walcottcb.com/firestik-k1a-internal-locking-quick-disconnect-p-571.html?cPath=28_354_446

I'm telling you, if you think you have a good ground and have double and triple checked, this will solve your problem.

 

Thanks guys I will be adding all these things.

 

What length is your Firestik?

 

It is two feet.

 

You'll have an easier time tuning and the radio will perform better with a longer antenna. On my Jeep, a 3ft is tolerable but a 4ft is perfect.

I stumbled onto this years ago: hxxp://www.firestik.com/Instl-Text/ford174.htm

"ABOUT ANTENNAS

The most popular antenna selected for this type of installation is the FS3, 3-foot Firestik II. If you want a lighter antenna you may use the FL3 3-foot FireFly. For added bandwidth, select either the FL4 or FS4 antenna.

You can use an FS2 2-foot antenna but there will be limitations. The offset location limits available ground plane for the antenna and the inherent characteristic of short antennas limit bandwidth. We were unable to achieve sub-2.0:1 SWR across all 40 CB channels. However, the vehicle owner stated that he only used channels below 20 for day to day use and would prefer the convenience of a short antenna since the vehicle was in and out of his garage on a daily basis. Inasmuch as he only used half of the radio's bandwidth, we tuned the FS2 antenna for maximum performance at channel 10 (center of channels 1 thru 20) instead of channel 19. The user also had an FS4 antenna that he kept on-hand and used when he was on road trips and the extra height was not a daily issue. The FS4, having more bandwidth, was tuned across all 40 channels. Both antennas were tuned at the time of mount installation so the user could change from the FS2 to the FS4 (and back) without tuning at the time of exchange. "

 

So what is the purpose of this? Just to ground the tail gate? Correct me if I am wrong, but all I see is a wire going from the main tub, to the tail gate. Wouldnt it just be better to run the ground wire from the tub to the mount for the antenna?

Thanks

 

You can see how I grounded it here.