Awesome job on the ingenuity.

There is a thread section designated to Write-ups. PhotoBucket or TinyPic are both great places to upload the pictures from.

 

Could you post some pictures of the CB under the seat

 

Sure - I'm working on a writeup - I processed about 61 photos tonight, and will now start writing the text to go with them. In the meantime, here's a pic of the CB mounted under the seat. On my '13 Rubi with the heated leather seats, there's a bracket / "lip" that sticks out, and I drilled two holes in it to attach the CB's factory bracket. I assume (hope) that on non-Rubi leather seat models, the same bracket exists, but I have no way to tell. Full writeup to follow in a day or two...

This photo is a little deceiving - you may be thrown off by the fact that bright light comes out from under the seat - but keep in mind I had the seat removed (what a pain in the arse, those bolts are TIGHT!) and it's laid down on its side. Anyway, what you're looking at here is as if you are in the back seat, crouched down below seat level, looking towards the front end of the Jeep. That is, in the photo, the bottom of the frame is actually down, up is up, the CB's face (on left) is pointed at the driver's door, etc...

This configuration does three important things: 1) keeps the CB off the floor where water could pool; 2) keeps CB out of view except the face is visible when driver's door is open - easily solved by draping it with a black cloth; and 3) it's a rigid mount. I don't think you want it just sitting there. Must not rattle or move, as that would be annoying and also put undue stress on all the wires of the control/display cables. Especially when a Jeep is doing what a Jeep loves to do - off-roading. I put lock washers on the bolts holding the bracket to the seat tab, so the nuts wouldn't come undone with vibrations etc.

This is not the ideal location for the speaker. CB audio, especially being AM mode, is ridiculously hard to copy. Having this audio come from under the seat makes it even worse. I disabled the internal speaker and just run a male-make cable from the CB "external speaker" output to the Jeep factory radio's "aux in" and it works great, except that now you have two audio controls to balance. I just set the factory radio at the same audio level as I'd normally listen to on AM/FM/CD/sat, and then set the CB's audio control afterwards. All further adjustments to volume are done with the Jeep's radio control (familiar location, easy to get to, intuitive)

 

Awesome thanks! I was planning to use the some placement under the seat as well since my wife drives the jeep most of the time and I didn't want to hear her nagging about installing it up above the mirror lol. I think I'm going to use the same radio as you since its fairly cheap.

 

Great idea!

 

My bad - I said it was the Cobra 29, but I meant to say Cobra 25 (LTD Classic). Corrected...

The 29 is slightly larger with a little more functionality. What I used here was the more basic 25...

 

Thanks for sharing, this is definitely something to look at as I am putting both CB and 2-way in my '13 Rubi. Looking forward to your write up.

 

Very nice looking! Was it hard to pull the dash apart where the off road buttons are?


Sent from my thingy.

 

Never mind. Very easy to pull that piece off.


Sent from my thingy.

 

The side panel comes off easily - it is retained by only a few spring clips. The "OFF ROAD" pod is trickier though - while it is retained by only four metal spring clips, a couple of them are hard to reach. I inserted a screwdriver through where the side panel was removed, and compressed the spring while gently pulling the pod out of the dash.