Installed a new Uniden 520xl with a 3ft Firestik on a Terraflex spare tire mount and 18ft coax. My SWR meter is reading between 9 and 9.5 on 1, 20, and 40. Do I need a ground for the mount or antenna? If so where and how do I run it. I ground some powder coat off the mount where the mount bolt went through and that did nothing. Help please. Electrical is not my cup of tea. Thanks.

 

From the way you describe it, you need to run a 10 ga wire from the mount
to the frame.
There are some that run the groung wire thru the tailgate to the speaker mount bo;t at the rear of the jeep.
This should drop your reading.
Whatever you do, dont key the mike any more until you get the ground done.

 

Sounds good I will give it a try. Thanks.

 

I had the same problem. Did you remove any of the powder coat on the teraflex mount?

 

I did file off, down to bare metal where the two bold mounted.

 

hmm...I just filed down on the underneath where the antenna stud came up through and got my readings down.

 

Is your antenna adjustable?

 

Just a tip. Make sure your not trying to tune the CB in a garage. You want to be in an open area
I wasted many hours trying to tune mine inside the garage

 

Yes the antenna is adjustable. Everything I've read says that if your meter is in the red on all the channels is a ground issue, not antenna length. I don't have the spearker bolts to hook up to. I have the wire but no bolts. I think I'm gonna run a wire from the mount, through the tail gate and grind off a little paint under the carpet and run a sheet metal screw through the tub. This should ground the mount. Also I did take some powder coat off where the cable mount was on one of the holes. Tried on both sides and the reading is still in the red. I was out in an open field as far away from things as I could get.

 

You shouldn't need an additional ground with that terraflex mount, I have a SWR of 1.3:1 with that same mount.

All I did was ground off the paint where the mount attached to the tire carrier mount and where the stud for the antenna goes through.