Saturday, Dec 17, 2005 at 10:00
Wayne
I have installed dozens of HF's in 4wd's, several in my own troopies over the years.
If you don't have the Codan installation manual see if you can get one as it has several good tips.
My troopy was electrically virtually totally silent after I did the same to it as the police do to there vehicles fitted with HF's.
As has been said earthing of components is paramount, remove bolts holding bullbar, towbar etc, remove paint to shiny metal, fit grounding straps, then repaint/spray whatever to stop corrosion.
Even if the item such as a towbarisn't involved in the install it will still generate static electricity when driving down the road due to airflow if not
well grounded to the rest of the vehicle.
Fit copper braid straps across ALL door hinges, bonnet and exhaust system, the latter at the rear, fit it around the rubber block at the back, again remove paint to ensure good connections.
Basic things to pay attention to as detailed in the manual are: don't run power cables alongside control cables (antenna and remote head) or antenna coax, I used to run power down one side of the vehicle and control cables down the other.
Preferably fit the HF to the main battery as when camped the aux battery is usually drained due to frig and lights and even a volt or so will affect antenna tuning efficiency. Even talking on the hf for several hours you won't drain the battery enough to affect starting. When the HF is just listening the battery drain is negligable.
Re the antenna, if you have the black parallel sided job start saving for a new one as they will fail, the most reliable were the earliest rough fibreglass ones, parts are virtually non existant for them these days. The later versions of the tapered antennas seem to be ok.
None of the auto antennas like being mounted beside a steel belted radial spare tyre, you have a coil of wire electically isolated from the vehicle which badly affects the antenna tuning and operation (reception and transmission)
On the troopy various things will cause interference, the biggest is the sender for the oil pressure gauge, soldering a 1.5uf capacitor between the centre terminal and the metal case should stop most of it, the fan motor and windscreen wiper motors both cause noise, some later models the dash instruments cause probs (probably the voltage regulator for the dash). The HF may also pick up the CPU in GPS's, laptops and anything else that has a chip in it, they have a very sensitive receiver. Fluoro lights will also play havoc with reception, not just yours but anyone elses nearby.
Your HF will probably interfere with other electrical appliances in the car too.
My UHF CB stops on certain channels when in scan if the HF is on.
Other vehicles may be affected by RF from your antenna if you transmit too. My favourite used to be a mates early V6 Pajero, we could be side by side at the lights, on the green he would start to pull away from the diesel troopy, I'd tune the antenna on 11 megs as he got level with the bullbar and antenna and his engine would miss, die, and nearly cut out, he'd get the bleep s as the troopy beat him to the punch!
When we had an incoming selcall we had a routine to turn everything off and pull over and stop the engine to minimise reception problems.
Also forget about using your HF if within close proximity to a TD5 landy, the noise from the electronic injection overloads the receiver!
Any questions give me a yell.
The 8528 is one of the best and simplest radios to have, very easy to use and very reliable, keep the sun and UV off the front panel on either transmitter or remote head as that is the weak point and there are no new spares available.
AnswerID:
144252