What did you do to your Ranger today? (Part Deux!)

[ekrampitzjr]

Anyway, I don't think I ever said what I have. It's a 40 channel Uniden PRO520XL that I got used for $5 a few years ago and the antenna is a magnetic Wilson 1000. Theoretically that setup should be able to skip in years with ideal ionospheric conditions, and the guy I bought the antenna from was kind of complaining that he was trying to talk to someone local once and wound up talking to someone in Georgia. ...

I have my great grandfather's old 40 channel that he used as a base station that I could bring out here when I come back. It still worked when he died, and rumor has it that that radio may be over the legal wattage limit. ...

Talking to someone far away on CB frequencies was known as "skip", which described what the signals were doing in the ionosphere. It could be annoying if the conditions were right and you were trying to talk to someone near you. Technically, trying to "talk skip" on purpose was illegal because of a mileage limit for CB radios. You weren't supposed to talk to someone more than 250 km (155 miles) away on a CB.

Finding those deliberately talking skip was one way the feds busted those running illegal linear amplifiers or "linears" that boosted the signal. Usually the signal strength itself gave away the game. A linear was the normal way to boost the wattage, though I'm sure some radios could be directly modified internally. The legal maximum limit was and still is only 4 watts on the old CB frequencies (not SSB).

 

[Rick W]

Somehow I missed this one yesterday. Maybe the notification thing only shows the 15 most recent ones and this was one of the earliest two?

Anyway, I don't think I ever said what I have. It's a 40 channel Uniden PRO520XL that I got used for $5 a few years ago and the antenna is a magnetic Wilson 1000. Theoretically that setup should be able to skip in years with ideal ionospheric conditions, and the guy I bought the antenna from was kind of complaining that he was trying to talk to someone local once and wound up talking to someone in Georgia.

View attachment 143817
I didn't have a banana, but here it is with my Ranger for scale.

But I'm an idiot. The guy I bought the antenna from had the cord tightly coiled for storage, and since it was still long enough I didn't even think to remove that inductor. I unwound it with the radio on and hears a conversation becoming clearer as I did so.

View attachment 143816

Then I hopped on the interstate and ran up the mountain to the Wal-Mart in Evergreen at 10:00 last night. I forgot how much gas that little excursion burns, so at $4.49/gallon I don't think I'll be doing that again just to go to a Wal-Mart where I won't have to wait for the cashier to yell for a translator because the manufacturer's coupon on a can of soup is expired and she doesn't speak English. Again.

I only got one response when I was asking for a radio check on 19, but he said I was loud and clear and he sounded pretty good on my end. I also picked up some rag chewing on 6 once I got high enough. After I got back down I also picked up a conversation that, based on how it dropped out for a while when I dropped behind the mesa and then came back real strong for a brief time, may have been happening as far as 6 or 8 miles away. Everything except the radio check response wouldn't have broken squelch, but there's no telling how far away the guys on 6 were between the wattages that some people run on there and the fact that I was probably 2,000 feet above Denver with a clear line of sight way off into the plains.

I haven't really tried calibrating anything. I don't have an SWR meter, and even on my cheap handheld ham radio that I definitely don't use on GMRS frequencies without a GMRS license (the definition of a government cash grab, the only license requirement is to send them money) on wheeling trips I'm constantly fiddling with settings and I usually leave the squelch pretty low. In March I was talking to the other part of our group that went up an even harder section of trail from a good distance away one night and no one else in my group could hear the other end of that conversation.

I tried to find someone in my 4x4 club group chat, but the only response there was "What's CB?" from one girl and another girl's explanation of "Something that truckers used to use." I know one guy in it had a CB in his Toyota, but he sold it when he bought his 392 swapped Jeep and I think he only has a GMRS now. On the other hand there are only 4 girls active in that club and I kind of got 2 of them to talk to me briefly. Even though at least 3/4 of them are taken and I wouldn't be interested in any of them, that's the most action I've gotten in a long time...

But I am probably going back to Tennessee in a couple of weeks for the rest of the summer. I have my great grandfather's old 40 channel that he used as a base station that I could bring out here when I come back. It still worked when he died, and rumor has it that that radio may be over the legal wattage limit. If anyone saw my post about AI in whatever thread that was that's the same great grandfather that was mentioned in the New York Times article.

I've found that gluing the foam back on doesn't affect the quality enough for me to notice if it's done right. I have tinnitus in my right ear and I've ruptured my left eardrum twice from infections, so while I can appreciate good speakers there's a point where "good enough" doesn't really improve. If I want really good quality I'll fire up the 115 pound towers in my living room that each have 7 speakers in them. I pulled them both out of a dumpster.

And my only working AC is opening the windows, so at the moment I mainly need speakers that are still audible and sound halfway decent over both the wind noise and my earplugs. I don't have enough steel bumper to be comfortable with running someone over yet, but I do need to get my air horn hooked to a real switch. And now I also need to run dedicated power to my CB so that I can stop listening to my fuel pump.


Do you really want to discuss it, or do you just want an excuse to verify my claims of having an unusually high voice so that you can better poke fun at me? Jokes aside I might, but I'm not too big on talking on the phone. Living in Georgia for so long you probably wouldn't have as much trouble understanding me as people in Colorado or in foreign call centers, but my voice also likes to randomly quit working so well. If it's happy I can get several hours out of it, but if it isn't then even short conversations become interesting as my voice randomly drops out for one or two words in the middle of a sentence.


Well, now I'm off to relube my caliper slide pins. It's only been 2,500 miles, and I used that Sil-Glyde stuff, but my temperature gun says that that brake is dragging just a hair. I'll still have a look at the bearings while I'm in there, but that rotor was at least 20 degrees warmer than the other rotor and both hubs after 15 minutes of driving. There's also no play in anything except the ball joints and I've smelled hot brakes a couple of times in the last week.

You should be able to calibrate your SWR with the meter that’s on your Uniden. Check

 

[superj]

I got a wilson 3 foot tuneable antenna for 50 cents at a garage sale this last saturday.

Now i just have ti keep my eyes open for a cb, antenna mount, cable, and mic

 

[superj]

I found my swr meter and moved it to the new toolbox a few months back

 

[mtnrgr]

Replaced both outer door handles. Driver side was broke and passenger side had slop. Wasn't fun drilling those rivets out. Put in bolts, nuts, washers when I installed the new handles. Drove it around 40 miles also.

 

[Things2do]

Talking to someone far away on CB frequencies was known as "skip", which described what the signals were doing in the ionosphere. It could be annoying if the conditions were right and you were trying to talk to someone near you. Technically, trying to "talk skip" on purpose was illegal because of a mileage limit for CB radios. You weren't supposed to talk to someone more than 250 km (155 miles) away on a CB.

Finding those deliberately talking skip was one way the feds busted those running illegal linear amplifiers or "linears" that boosted the signal. Usually the signal strength itself gave away the game. A linear was the normal way to boost the wattage, though I'm sure some radios could be directly modified internally. The legal maximum limit was and still is only 4 watts on the old CB frequencies (not SSB).

Amplifiers, especially the cheaper made ones, can also cause splatter. Nowadays they usually don't go after CB idiots unless they really screw up though. There are several truck stops that I've passed near that were regularly blasting advertisements out at way over legal power levels with plenty of splatter onto adjacent channels.

He wasn't running insane power levels as far as I can tell, and no one that remembers him has said anything about him talking further than 10 or 20 miles out, but he would have been exceptionally easy to fox hunt if he was too far out of line. I've been told that he had a "big antenna" up into the trees in his backyard, probably a 1/2 or 5/8 wave if I had to guess from their descriptions, and being old and paralyzed he was on it a lot.
If it is true then either it's internal or his amplifier has disappeared in the 35 or 40 years since he died. I've never opened that radio.

You should be able to calibrate your SWR with the meter that’s on your Uniden. Check

It's a cheap radio, it doesn't have an internal SWR meter.

I lubed the caliper slide pins on the passenger side. I only drove it a few miles to go order an F-250 tensioner, but that seems to have fixed it. If not it at least helped.

So then I decided to dump and fill my rear differential. That should be relatively quick and easy, right? Somehow the cover bolts were only reasonably tight and didn't require 100+ pounds of torque on my beam style wrench to break them loose. Unlike the fill plug was when I first checked it last fall... Then I pried the cover off, and I managed to keep the oil in the drain pan and off of me. Everything was going surprisingly well up to that point. So I cleaned off the cover and then started scraping the RTV off. Not counting stopping for dinner, I'm an hour into that RTV and it still isn't all off of there.

Is it normal for the cover on an 8.8 to be plastic?

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

Amplifiers, especially the cheaper made ones, can also cause splatter. Nowadays they usually don't go after CB idiots unless they really screw up though. There are several truck stops that I've passed near that were regularly blasting advertisements out at way over legal power levels with plenty of splatter onto adjacent channels.

He wasn't running insane power levels as far as I can tell, and no one that remembers him has said anything about him talking further than 10 or 20 miles out, but he would have been exceptionally easy to fox hunt if he was too far out of line. I've been told that he had a "big antenna" up into the trees in his backyard, probably a 1/2 or 5/8 wave if I had to guess from their descriptions, and being old and paralyzed he was on it a lot.
If it is true then either it's internal or his amplifier has disappeared in the 35 or 40 years since he died. I've never opened that radio.


It's a cheap radio, it doesn't have an internal SWR meter.
View attachment 143823

I lubed the caliper slide pins on the passenger side. I only drove it a few miles to go order an F-250 tensioner, but that seems to have fixed it. If not it at least helped.

So then I decided to dump and fill my rear differential. That should be relatively quick and easy, right? Somehow the cover bolts were only reasonably tight and didn't require 100+ pounds of torque on my beam style wrench to break them loose. Unlike the fill plug was when I first checked it last fall... Then I pried the cover off, and I managed to keep the oil in the drain pan and off of me. Everything was going surprisingly well up to that point. So I cleaned off the cover and then started scraping the RTV off. Not counting stopping for dinner, I'm an hour into that RTV and it still isn't all off of there.

Is it normal for the cover on an 8.8 to be plastic?

Some of them were plastic and some weren’t, it’s a mix-n-match thing.

Fill plugs can be a PITA. I stripped out the one on dad’s Ranger and ended up welding an old 1/2” bolt into it to get it free.

Smaller amplifiers can be internal, IIRC, but the usual is a “tune and peak” where some things get tweaked internally. Some factory radios put out way less than the maximum 4 watts, so they would make adjustments to put out the full 4 watts or sometimes a little more.

 

[Li'l Work Truck]

Some of them were plastic and some weren’t, it’s a mix-n-match thing.

Fill plugs can be a PITA. I stripped out the one on dad’s Ranger and ended up welding an old 1/2” bolt into it to get it free.

Smaller amplifiers can be internal, IIRC, but the usual is a “tune and peak” where some things get tweaked internally. Some factory radios put out way less than the maximum 4 watts, so they would make adjustments to put out the full 4 watts or sometimes a little more.

That's what I had done with all my CB's. I had a Cobra 19 that I got peaked and tuned but wished I hadn't. It would pick up any electrical noise no matter the squelch. I figured it was cranked too high. My 25 doesn't do that.

My God, that radio has been in a box for 14 years...

 

[sgtsandman]

I pulled the 2011 out of the driveway with a recovery strap and the 2019. The fuel pump is officially dead. I needed to get the 2011 out of the driveway so I could get the trailer out of the garage. The trailer needed to be out of the garage so I could use the chain hoist to remove the bed cap from the 2019. Once the cap was off, I used the trailer to get the cap out of the garage for when it comes time to put the RTT on the 2019. The Softopper and over cage has to be installed on the 2019 first. Then I can roll the cart with the RTT into the garage to be lifted and installed on the 2019. In the mean time, the fold up toneau cover is back on the 2019.

 

[sgtsandman]

That's what I had done with all my CB's. I had a Cobra 19 that I got peaked and tuned but wished I hadn't. It would pick up any electrical noise no matter the squelch. I figured it was cranked too high. My 25 doesn't do that.

My God, that radio has been in a box for 14 years...

The later years of the original Rangers are notorious EMF generators. I had to do a lot of work the my 2011 to kill the noise. A filter on the fuel pump power wires, bonding body panels to each other and to the frame, and bonding the exhaust to the frame before all the EMF was cancelled out. My 2019 isn't anywhere near as bad. I could stand to have the exhaust bonded, but this probably all it needs.

 

[lil_Blue_Ford]

The later years of the original Rangers are notorious EMF generators. I had to do a lot of work the my 2011 to kill the noise. A filter on the fuel pump power wires, bonding body panels to each other and to the frame, and bonding the exhaust to the frame before all the EMF was cancelled out. My 2019 isn't anywhere near as bad. I could stand to have the exhaust bonded, but this probably all it needs.

This. My first Ranger, even with a non tuned-n-peaked radio would pick up engine RPM and fuel pump whine.

 

[Li'l Work Truck]

The later years of the original Rangers are notorious EMF generators. I had to do a lot of work the my 2011 to kill the noise. A filter on the fuel pump power wires, bonding body panels to each other and to the frame, and bonding the exhaust to the frame before all the EMF was cancelled out. My 2019 isn't anywhere near as bad. I could stand to have the exhaust bonded, but this probably all it needs.

This. My first Ranger, even with a non tuned-n-peaked radio would pick up engine RPM and fuel pump whine.

Thanks, guys! I'll be sure to do the same, @sgtsandman. The exhaust part surprises me most, because I wouldn't think it would have anything to do with electrical noise, except thinking about it, the O2 sensors are there... How did you secure to the exhaust, a worm clamp around a hanger and a ground strip? Ring terminal on a spring clamp? Did you go exhaust to body, or to frame?

 

[sgtsandman]

Thanks, guys! I'll be sure to do the same, @sgtsandman. The exhaust part surprises me most, because I wouldn't think it would have anything to do with electrical noise, except thinking about it, the O2 sensors are there... How did you secure to the exhaust, a worm clamp around a hanger and a ground strip? Ring terminal on a spring clamp? Did you go exhaust to body, or to frame?

The exhaust acts like a transmitting antenna for the spark plugs. Bonding it to the vehicle, since it is pretty much isolated frome the vehicle because of the rubber hangers, gives the signal some place to go.

As far as the how, I took the easy button and bought a kit or two with the straps and the clamps. The straps are coated, braided bonding straps and came with exhaust style clamps to pinch the straps between the pipe and the clamp. Worm clamps would probably work. From there, I took advatage of existing fasteners or holes in the frame where I could, some to the frame and some to the body. I only had to make a couple of holes.

I believe the recommendation is to the frame, but if the bed and body panels are bonded to the frame and to each other, bond locations for the exhaust shouldn't matter.

The cab and bed need to be bonded to the frame and to each other. Horizonal panels, like the hood should take priority as well over horizonatal ones, like the doors. The bed needs a strap in each corner to the frame and two straps bonding the bed to the cab. Two straps on each hood hinge will work for the hood. The cab needs to be bonded as well, but I can't remember it was two or four. If I get a chance today, I'll look.

I think I still have the article on the filter for the fuel pump. The website I got it from no longer exists. The bonding straps for the body panels can be bought on amazon. The exhaust kit, from DX Engineering (I think).

I also installed filters on the power supply to the radios themselves. Wiring straight to the battery is supposed to help, but in my case, it did not. It was one of the first things I tried.

I really should write an article on it.