quick cb wiring question

crawlin91 · Sep 1, 2009

just curious where you guys run your power wire for a cb setup.
Directly to battery with a inline fuse?
Elsewhere?
PICS?
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feellnfroggy · Sep 1, 2009

I put cig lighter plugs on mine so they can remain portable. But yeah you can runa wire that way or if you have an older ranger you can wire the hot lead into the fuse box, and the ground to a frame bolt.

crawlin91 · Sep 1, 2009

how do you do the cig lighter setup? wouldnt you still need to ground it on the frame or body?

feellnfroggy · Sep 1, 2009

Why? unless your running an amp most CB's run only two wires, hot and ground. You can buy unwired cig light plug kits. its just a cig lighter plug with a fuse and two bare wires. Simple splice and plug in the cb. Off you go.

What kinda radio are you running? Do you have any pics?

97BlackBetty · Sep 1, 2009

I removed my my cigarette lighter that was part of the ashtray assembly on my truck (removed the ashtray as well). I used the existing wiring for the lighter to hook up the cb.

crawlin91 · Sep 1, 2009

both those ideas sound really good. I know its only the two wires just didnt know it would be that simple. Im not sure of what kind of radio. It came with the Bronco II I bought last winter. Going to be using one of those side ball mounts.

feellnfroggy · Sep 1, 2009

I understand your question about grounding to the frame, I didnt catch it a minute ago. Yes you can ground to the frame if your gonna hardwire to the battery, But if you go the lighter plug route ther are two wires red and black, black is grounded already. If you wire up the way blackbetty is saying there should be a ground wire there too, otherwise you can ground to the metal frame around the ashtray slide.

RumpRangerSTX · Sep 1, 2009

u can or go form the cig. lighter and just ground it to the body or where ever u want

99RangerKrazy · Sep 1, 2009

I went straight to the battery with mine. No huss, no fuss, and will always work.

Chance · Sep 1, 2009

99RangerKrazy said:
I went straight to the battery with mine. No huss, no fuss, and will always work.

x2

That's the way my family has always done it... all our trucks have the cb's straight wired.

427ford · Sep 1, 2009

Another vote for direct to battery wiring.

dwsykes · Sep 1, 2009

to get proper power to the CB you must go straight to the battery. The cig lighter will work, but can cause problems in the future. Many will disagree. Besides the directions to the CB says to straight wire the thing and use inline quick-blow fuses on pos and neg, or at least mine did....

fordmandan87 · Sep 1, 2009

97BlackBetty said:
I removed my my cigarette lighter that was part of the ashtray assembly on my truck (removed the ashtray as well). I used the existing wiring for the lighter to hook up the cb.

I did the same thing except I used the connecter for the ash tray to keep it mobile and replaceable if i drive another gen 2 rbv

4x4junkie · Sep 2, 2009

Please don't crosspost your Q in multiple forums, only one at a time is needed

(posts merged into one thread).

Agreed on straight to the battery. CBs are a little on the power-hungry side, and are fussy if they don't get enough.
A #14 wire straight to the battery should be good. Ground can be to the nearest bolt inside the cab (steering column support, seat, etc). Some will say run the ground straight back to the battery (which works fine as well), although I think you'll have much less voltage loss if the ground wire is kept shorter.

Bill · Sep 3, 2009

Directly to the battery.

12v cig lighters often have a votage drop due to excessive resistance. CB's were designed to run on 13.5/13.8V. If you have less than that then output power drops.

Wiring directly to the battery can also prevent noise from getting into the receiver.

quick cb wiring question

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