Niteshooter

After looking at all the spare tire antenna mounts I wound up getting a buddy of mine to make me a bracket instead. I had the spare tire mount for about 2 minutes and noticed the antenna will make contact with the tire.

This mount has a small welded on tab underneath to prevent it from spinning into the body tub. I have run glass mounts on a couple of cars but they are far from ideal and on the CJ I have my mount bolted to the spare tire bump stop on the side of the body tub.

karls10jk

Are those the MorRyde hinges? It seems odd that if they are that you'd have an issue. I have their hinges and the hi-lift mount, no interference with the tire if I were to run an antenna.

Niteshooter

Hinges are the stock 2011 hinges as far as I know, bought the Jeep used last fall, here's a better shot of hinges and antenna I'm running. I realized that at some point they changed the design so there is no bolt you can tap for the bracket on some newer JK's and the JL.

Have no problem with the hinges, I had a problem with where the spare tire antenna mount was positioned as it placed the antenna between the spare tire and the tailgate/glass. On the mount I bought off eBay it actually positioned the whip so that it touched the tire causing SWR to be high. Antenna was a Larsen base loaded coil tuned to 11 meter, also pulled a couple of other antennas out of the collection and all touched the tire, in motion the rocking motion of the antenna will tap the tire.

If the mount positions the base of the antenna above the tire then I would suspect it would be fine, in my case I looked at my options, didn't like the look of any of them and had a buddy make me the one in the picture which puts the antenna in a decent location in terms of tuning. Antenna is a quad band.

karls10jk

Those are the MorRyde hinges, much better than the stock hinges. They're greaseable so they should last a lifetime. Check out MorRyde's site to see other accessories that fit the hinges. They've got a solid tire carrier and tailgate reinforcement kit if you plan on going to a larger tire/ wheel combo without stressing your gate.

Niteshooter

Thanks, didn't know that. I did notice the grease fittings the first time I opened the tailgate and thought that was a good idea. The previous owner did install a few items that I knew weren't stock so it's good to know about the hinges.

11th

Don't mean to necro an 18 month old post but this is really a shame it is not a stock hinge. With JK taillight mounting weakness rendering tail light as problematic for antenna mount, this is one of the few rear end solutions that makes a lot of sense. Once you are on the other side of the hinge the section on the door itself you have a crappy as heck RF ground. Anything on that door also involves repeated stress of coax, and if done right, bonding strap. None of those problems exist if you on the outboard/body side side of hinge as pictured here.

No way to on a JK though getting under the hinge with an 90 degree mount on the body side due to the fact that the hinge is in a slightly receded depression on the body. one would also have to shim the lower hinge to be even.. The other alternative would be to weld a mount atop of the body side hinge but there is very little room for that.

karls10jk

With the complete MorRyde system, you could easily weld a mount on the body side. They've got a plate that moves the hinges out from the body to accommodate the tailgate reinforcement bracket. I'm not doing and CB work, but someone who is interested could certainly make it work and have it mounted with the body to avoid bending the coax.

Niteshooter

Yes the stock hinge doesn’t work. However the Morryde hinges are much better then stock and have grease fittings. Also not that expensive, I replaced the hinges on my JKU and built mounts for both.

Mounting the antenna outboard of the body is much better then the spare tire mount that is common. On my JKU we actually extended the bracket so that I could mount my quad band at the far end and my stubby for the MDT in board. For the amount of messing around with welding it would be a lot simpler to swap hinges for the stronger Morryde part and the make the bracket. If you are concerned about the bend on the coax going through the tailgate so far no problems with my setups. On the JK it is on it’s second winter and fine, I run the coax at the top corner of the tailgate under the rubber weather strip. If your antenna mount has a PL259 you could run the coax straight down and find a point where you can go into the body tub. I prefer my setup with the 90 degree cable splice at the antenna.

Niteshooter

I bought a strip of steel from a local company called The Metal Store. It was 4' long, 1 3/4" wide and 1/4" thick which was perfect for my application. Won't bend under wind load and with the small tab welded to the bottom it will not spin and rub the body tub. It does take a fair bit or work as you need to heat and then use a brake to put the bends into the part.

11th

Interesting. Thanks. It does invovle buying a few hundred bucks of accessory one might not need though given one has to get the two morryde kits. An alternative if one just cared about antenna mount would be to fabricate shims for all four stock hinges. For example, shim lower inboard, shim lower outboard, shim upper inboard and finally place a fabricated bracket behind the outboard upper hinge. The shims would be cheap and easy to fabricate, the mount a little more complex but not too bad.

If one has a four door an, accessory that also helps with antenna would be a 4door tuffy security deck as a ground plane and a 1/4 wave dual band antenna inside on it. If you were using a 50 watt transceiver and had kids in the back seat often I would skip that due to rf exposure, but otherwise that is not a bad solution for some. I have a two door so the tuffy deck is sway smaller and therefore not optimal although I get better results than with arizona rocky.

Another thing I am looking at is fabricating a reinforcing bar to go behind the actual two functional taillight screws (the outboard ones are essentially decorative) for the passenger side taillight assembly, so that basic taillight antenna mount that worked on prior wrangers would work on JK. Lots of room to work in that void.