Question:
I will be going to Steven's Transport in Jan. and am wondering about the factory antennas on their T-2000's. It looks like the mirror design won't allow mirror mounts of any type. Are the antennas ok to run or should I look into changing just the whips or try to get the coax too.
Thanks in advance,
Steve

Answer:

Like everything you wont know if the ones on the unit are any good but we have added antennas to some of ours and we had to mount them at the rear of the cab as you are correct about not being able to mount on the arms.

Answer:

If you look deep inside the top of the T2k mirror, you'll see a factory place to mount an antenna stud. You'll have to drill the mirror housing top to allow the stud to protrude. You can bring the cable into the cab alongside the heater & motor wiring.
I caution that the factory mounting location I found in my mirrors may not exist on yours. I would carefully disassemble the outer cover to inspect it before charging ahead with a drill.
The side body factory mounts are worthless.
There's no metal under the mounts to ground to.
You'll never get the swr down enough without using "no ground" antennas.
The cable is the cheapest 75 ohm crap you'll ever see.
I successfully used the rear hand rails as a mount. (single)
This left a bit of a dead spot directly behind me due the lack of groundplane.
But, after you tie in as much nearby metal as possible, the swr is good.
The coverage is adequate & way better than the factory body side mnts.
bc

Answer:

Thankyou bobc, I thought the factory mounts would be the cheapest they could use. Since it will be a company car I don't think I can get away with any drilling of the mirrors. I will be using a Cobra 19DX 4 and would like to get it peaked and opened up to max. Could I get by with the "no ground" whips and still get the swr's down to specs w/o changing the coax?
Thanks in advance,
Steve

Answer:

SBP,
Before I invested any money in "no ground" antennas, I would use the railing on the back of the cab.
Placing a single whip here will be infinitely better than running a pair of those short, no ground antennas.
Using the rail, you'll be able to run a much longer whip than had you gone with the side mnts. The longer whip is going to put a lot more signal into the air in general than the short, no ground ones.
I've never tried the no ground antennas on that car. I've never had any faith in them from previous applications. I just know from investigating why the regular whips I tried never would tune up, that there was no ground connections at those mounts to act as a counterpoise.
Frankly, those factory side mounts were a good idea. All they had to do to make them useful was make a counterpoise for them behind the interior.
They could have used a few "fanned out" radial wires or some wide metallic tape in the same fashion before putting in the interior. Would have made all the difference in the world.
If you elect to go with the rear railing, I placed the mount at the aprox center of the rail. The coax was gently "pull tied" to the railings towards the driver's side. You don't want to crush the cable under the pull ties. Just tight enough to keep it in place. The coax came down to the bottom of the cab & ran into the vent on the bottom of the cab.
The vent has louvered vanes and a thin mesh screening material inside. Presumably to keep bugs & some dirt out when the vanes get stuck open. I made a small hole in the screen for the coax entry.
You're inside the side box compartment now. I ran the coax along the door edge of the side box. I tucked it in between the insulation material on the floor and the cab wall. This kinda protected it from being crushed by stuff moving around in the side box.
Drill a convenient size hole in the partition wall in the front of the side box. This gives you access to the inside of the cab under the bunk.. Try to keep this hole close to the driver side wall and close to the floor pan.
A note: You may elect to just drill a hole in the foreward most floor of the side box. From here you can drop the coax down under the cab, run it alongside the facotry wiring and drill another hole behind the driver seat where the seat airlines come up. This will save time working with the interior.
Once the coax is routed from under the bunk to the interior, tuck it in alongside the carpeting towards the drivers door threshold plate. Remove the threshold plate & run the cable in that trough next to the factory harness's. Lay the coax in there so that it doesn't get pinched when the threshold is replaced.
A note: Depending on your interior. You might need to drill a pair of holes in a storage space so you can keep a straight line from the bunk to the threshold. You don't absolutely have to do this. It just makes for less corners to tuck around.
The coax will leave the threshold & run up into / behind the drivers kick panel. From there it's just a matter of placing it in the crack of the dash's console parts towards the windshield. You can tuck the coax into that separation with a dull screwdriver blade. It doesn't have to go far into the space. Just enough to hide it. Once the coax is at the windshiled, run it to the radio. It can just lay on the dash. You'll never see the cable while driving. You can bundle up the excess there too.
You'll need more cable than the usual 17 or 18 footer. It will take something like 30-33 feet. Since I buy cable by the spool, this was not an issue.
You can conveniently add a double female connector between two store bought cables or find a shop that sells by the foot.
This sounds like a lot of work. It's not. I just tried to be detailed, You'll see how easy it is once you reread this and look at the routing. It'll probably take a good couple or three hours to do a neat job & have a smoke break or two.
At any rate, it's way easier than trying to add grounding wires to those factory side mounts. That interior does not lend itself readily towards working on those mounts.
Good luck. remember, neatness counts.
bc

Answer:

That sounds like the way to go. Just out of curiousity what would be the best way to add grounding to the factory mounts?
Could you add a ground wire from the mount to a good solid ground like the frame or such, or would you have to add a few fanned out radial wires to make it work?
Thanks,
Steve

Answer:

Ideally, the factory would have included some sheet metallic screening in the roof & down the sides of the interior as well.
The screens could have been copper, aluminum or steel.
At the very least, they could have used some HVAC metal tape as I posed in another post.
Short of tearing the inside apart to add grounding I added some covert 9-10 ft wires to the outside of the cab.
The 9-10 ft length is not perfect but close enough.
It would take a special meter to "tune" the ground wires to the perfect length.
If you have a grid dip meter, you'd use it to tune these wires.
It's not necessary to run all the way to a frame part.
The frame is too far away to act as a decent ground for the antennas.
In trying this, I needed to keep it decent looking so I ran some leads along the roof line from the mounts.
They ran both forward & backwards.
I had a red T2k so some red 16ga hookup wire was used.
You can find some colored wire at an electrical shop or radio shack.
I used small dabs of crazy glue to hold the wires to the body & in crevices.
At the mounts I used a self-drilling, self-tapping screw to attach the 2 ground leads.
The open ends were left unconnected to anything.
This sounds strange I'm sure.
Picture a base station 1/4 wave groundplane antenna.
The main radiator is a 1/4 wave whip.
The radials are whips just slightly longer than that. (about 5% longer)
The radials leave the mount at an angle somewhere between 90 & 45 degrees.
I was reasonably successful using this setup.
Performance was on par with most dual setups.
I did this on the road so I wasn't able to really test the radiation pattern.
Antenna tuning took a little more work than a simpler setup but...it worked out eventually.
bc

Answer:

My question would be "why bother" today?

Answer:

Why bother?
I don't know.
I guess if I'm going to rely on something to help get my butt out of trouble, I'd like it to work it's best.
I still use cb to jibber jabber with fellow humans along the way.
Humans are, for the most part, a social creature.
If we weren't, there'd be little need for forums on the net.
Cb'ing helps pass the time, introduces you to new people & thoughts.
Never know when you're going to meet someone with similar interests.
Never know when that 10 seconds of warning will come in handy to miss an alligator.
I still find it convenient going down the road.
All the stuff I mentioned could also apply to setting up a Ham rig in the car too.
bc

Answer:



Answer:


You should have stopped right there concerning "CB" communications.
It ain't what it used to be.

Answer:

You're probably right.

Answer:

bobc on Stevens T-2000 they have no place on the mirrors to mount their antinnas. Its only on the side of the body. But the T-600 has a place on the mirrors.

Answer:


here is a mount for the T2000

Answer:

That's a pretty nice mount Rusty.
It's more than I would have done on my own.
I was happy with mounting them behind the cab but this mount could have possibilities.
I'm not seeing the price though.
Maybe if it were SS or hard drawn aluminum.
Jo-Jo.. When I referenced the T2K's mirrors..
I was refering to what's underneath the mirror cover on top.
On mine, there was a bracket / hole affair underneath the cover.
I've seen the same mirrors on other T2K's that the hole was cut out for the antenna to pass thru into the mirror brackets under the cover.
As I said, I don't know if that is available on all the T2K mirrors & you would have to remove the cover to be sure before cutting a small hole in the cover.

Answer:

SBPhilli,
the dual antenna system in the newer kenworth t-2000's was designed
to operate without a connection to the vehicles body/frame ground
reference. the harness is configured to be lossy in terms of shielding so
that it serves more than one purpose. the harness IS the ground plane
for the antennas installed in the side mounts. unfortunately, because
of this, the existing factory harness will only operate as intended with
certain particular antenna designs, none of them by the way which are
of the no ground plane variety. i have discovered only two antenna
designs to date that work extremely well with the factory harness, one
is a tunable base load and the other a tunable fiberglas top load, both
of them being exactly four feet in height. achievable swr is 1.5:1 on the
average. what does "extremely well" translate into in terms of
performance? most drivers are reporting distances up to 20 miles both
ways under not quite optimum conditions with radios only, no amplifiers.
the technical explanation as to how all of this is possible is rather lengthy
but you may want to give this some consideration before opting for
the alternative. after all, of all the popular antennas on the market, the
vertical height limit for any antenna installed in the side mounts on
this particular tractor is pretty much limited to four feet in height.
you can still provide for better than average communications without
having to go to the expense and trouble of replacing the OEM harness.
if this information arrives too late to be of any use to you, maybe it will
provide an alternative for someone else in the same situation. 73,
228