Powering a cb from the fuse panel

I got a midland cb a couple of weeks ago and had planned to power it from the fuse panel under the steering wheel, so that it would turn off with the ignition. After a lot of mistakes i finally figured it out. I had a hard time finding any information on so this is a little write up to make things easier for anyone else who wants to do this. I bought everything at Kragens(now O'reillys i guess)

First off you have to go buy a Littlehouse mini add a fuse or any other mini add a fuse. And a 7.5 amp mini fuse. Heres the add a fuse i bought.



The fuse panel is located behind the little coin drawer thing to the left of the steering wheel. To remove this all you have to do is open the drawer and then pull up, it should come out easily. The fuses in my year tacoma(2009) are low profile mini fuses which will not fit in the add a fuse(that i had anyways) so you will have to use one of the fuses that came with the add a fuse and one of the fuses you bought. I found a couple websites that said that cb's only draw 2 amps so i used 7.5 amp fuses which worked fine. It should look like this



I tried using the add a fuse in the open slots first and that did not work. I ended up using the ACC slot which had a 7.5 amp low profile mini fuse in it already which will be left over after being replaced with the add a fuse. Here is what mine looks like


I just crimped the end of the add a fuse to the red power wire of the cb. The black wire I grounded to a screw behind the plastic panel that the black wire is leading to in the picture below.


Hope this helped anyone interested. Good Luck

Also thanks to db67fm for helping out

 

Good write-up! I have those same floor mats

 

ha thanks. Im still not done with the cb install yet, gotta figure out the antenna setup and find a PA.

 

i got my pa from radio shack for about 40 bucks and it is pretty loud!
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103339

 

good write up. I could of used this when i was installing mine

 

Did this fit under the hood or where did you put it?

 

yea it fit under my hood. If you are standing at the front of the truck looking at the windshield, i put it in the back right corner and it fits snug with out any tie downs or anything.

 

Nice that would be easy. Its out of stock right now is the only thing

 

Got that PA you were talking about and it works perfectly. Thanks for the suggestion. Im still working on figuring out how to attach the antenna to my toolbox without drilling into it however. Any suggestions?

 

Pretty badass!

A 12v relay controlled by your ACC or any other number of wires would have done the trick, too, in parallel with a switch so you could bypass it and run it with the truck off if you wanted to.

It would actually be pretty cool if you applied that principle to your offroad lights- turn offroad lights on and the CB comes on automatically, with a switch in series that you can turn it on with the lights off, and a relay to shut both of them down when you turn the key off.

 

Heres my setup. I think it would be most convenient to find sort of a z bracket to clip on to the inside of the tool box and stick out when it gets past the lid of the toolbox. sort of like a z kind of shape. The only problem is finding some piece of hardware that looks like this

 

update for anyone interested.(probably not many) ha. but couldnt find any sort of mount that would clip to the lip of a toolbox and work with a firestik so i just ended up with a magnetic mount roof antenna. Which has worked fine. Also picked up an SWR Meter and got it tuned, Which the local cb shop wanted 40 bucks for. good luck

 

That sucks. Ya i might swap to a 2' antenna instead of the 3' antenna when the one i have gets bent or something. But its worked pretty well for me. Are you going to switch to a firestik then?

 

I just installed a 3 foot FireStik with a spring mount last night. I am getting decent reception but possibly going ahead and getting the 4 foot FireStik with a new spring mount see if the reception gets a little better.

 

Hi,

I connected my Cb with a fuse tap and my radio and clock are dead? Any ideas?

 

check your fuses.

 

When I removed the fuse tap, and replaced the tap with a 7.5 AMP fuse the radio turned on.

Any ideas?

 

I did all that and my radio had no power? Any ideas?