04 Ham radio install

2004 Tacoma Radio install
The antennas are in place and now it is time to put in the radios. I am going to install a FT8900 and an FT857d in my Tacoma Xtra cab. I intend to put both radios in the storage areas under the rear seats. This will keep them safe from my 100 pound dog who gets run of the Xtra cab area. In the background are the house station antennas, Hex beam and wire.
#1

The first thing I did was to remove the sill covers and kick plate on the driver’s side and decide how to run all the wires. That nice big bulkhead connector in the firewall behind the fuse block was just the place to start.
#2

You can see the antenna cable sticking through the bulkhead and the power wire already run in picture
#3

Make sure when you are routing the wires to stay to the outside of the lower seat belt mount so you do not have to reroute the wires like I did on my first try. There is a nice opening in the lower outside corner of the cover face to run the wires through
#4

I pulled a 10ga fine strand wire from the battery to this compartment. I fused both sides with 40 amp in line fuses at the battery. Why fuse both sides? First off the factory does it so there must be a reason, and the reason is, in the off change that there is a short circuit the positive side will pop and shut down the power. But what happens if the battery cable loses it ground connection? It will try to pull the power through any remaining ground connections like the one in your radio, pulling all those amps though that small circuit will smoke it in a hurry so having a fuse in the negative side will prevent this from happening saving your expensive radio.
#5

I use power poles on all my radio wiring, making it easy to route power to the Rig runner fuse block. (http://www.powerwerx.com/powerpole-power-distribution/rigrunner-4005-starter-kit.html) This will let me power all my ham radio stuff from this single wire pulled into the storage area. Next I mounted the FT8900 on the storage cover on the driver’s side. I decided to put it on the cover for ease of access. Flip the cover over and there it is. Easy to get the programing cable; check the antenna cables; speaker connection; and control head wire, all out in the open.
#6

#6a

I pulled the control head and speaker wires back through the hole in front of the storage area and routed them under the sill plate and carpet on the driver’s side, then under the carpet past the brake and accelerator peddles to the center console.
For the control head I used heavy duty Velcro and mounted it to the tapered area of the center console and ran the control cable through the shifter boot area to the head. (After use this proved to not be a good idea. The dog could step on it and it kept my eyes off the road. See the last picture for the final set up)
#7

The speaker is mounted in the hole that used to have the ash tray. The vertex speaker seems to fit quite well into this spot. All I had to do was elongate the hole in the mounting bracket slightly to use the 2 screws already in place. I did have to replace the screws with longer 3/8” ones.
#8

I did install of the FT 857d very much the same. I first mounted it to the cover and then ran all the wires. Extra for this install was a duplexer to bring the UHF, VHF and HF antenna ports to one output line. I am using the Atas 120 antenna by Yaesu for both bands. In the picture that is what the box is that is connected to the antenna ports.
#9

The coax was routed along the driver’s side and power came from the rig runner. The wires for the control head, speaker, and mic were routed along the passenger side under the sill similar to the driver’s side.
#10

The biggest difference was the control head cable which instead of going to the console I pull up to the top of the dash and ran it to a Lido mount # LM-700. I pried the face forward and then pushed a piece of ¼” airline down until I was able to grab it. Next I taped the control cable a gently pulled from the top while feeding from the bottom until I was able to fish the cable out through the opening.
#11
#12

A little work with a drill and a router bit gave me enough room to have the cable come through without leaving a big hole in the face plate.
I screwed the control head mount to the Lido mount and cleaned the top of the dash like the instructions requested and stuck the mount down.
#13

Now to install just insert the control cable and slide the control head into the mount until it locks in place. The mount has a swivel the cams into a locked position once thing s are set how you like, and it is solid enough that spinning the VFO barely moves the head.
#14

Here is a picture of the finished product, both radios in and working with minimal drilling. After attaching the mic clip with screws a friend told me about clip mounts from truck stops that have double stick tape on them. On my next trip past one I am going to stop in and pick some up, it would have saved me 2 holes I would not have had to make.
#15


After driving for a week or so I found the low mounting point for the FT8900 was not a good idea. It took to much time away from looking at the road to change and verify the new settings. I purchased another Lido mount and moved both heads up to eye level. This turned out to be a good change for me. This also shows that no off road truck is ever done there is always something you want to change or improve.
#16

Chuck

 

Looks good. I like the separate fuse box for the radios.

 

Thank you so much for this great write up! I used this as a reference during my ham install this weekend. K7DNS

 

Fuse on the negative is bad idea. First of all the main function of the fuse is to protect wires from melting and causing an electrical fire in a case of short . Fuse does not protect the device - if there is enough current to blow the fuse, the device is probably already fried. Now, if you have fuse on the ground and by any chance it malfunctions (meaning brakes the circuit disconnecting the negative) the normal current run through the device will try to close the circuit finding a ground using different path, in most cases the current goes where it shouldn't with great chances of frying some electronics (for example by reverse voltage).

If you are concern about loosing the ground from the battery, double it, triple it, but do not fuse it.