Outdoor Adventure USA

Drill a hole through the roof...it's easy to do, easy to seal, and will give you a short easy path to the inside of the FJ.

Drop the headliner on the side you are mounting the antenna, and make sure you do not get the coax in the way of the side curtain airbag if you have one. Just route the cable down the A- or B-pillar down to the floor and where ever you mount the radio...

smslavin wrote:Through the door? How's that work? Right now, I think I'm going to remove the outer A-pillar piece and run it down through there. Is that what you mean?

Yea, I'm okay drilling a hole in the dash. Already figured that's what I'd have to do. If I pull out the glove box and the radio, is there enough room to reach my hands in to pull the wire? Where could I find a rubber grommet so it isn't just a gaping hole?

Yeah, remove the glove box on the dash. You can remove the stereo but I don't know if it will help too much. You can buy the bulkhead grommets at Home Depot, Lowes, Willy's, Fryes, etc. They aren't too hard to find. I get mine at NAPA and West Marine.

I didn't even have to remove my outer A-Pillar to route that external wire. Like Larry said though, you might just want to go ahead and drill the roof. Think for the future if you do though. Drill it large enough to route more wires later when you decide to put lights up there. If you'd like, you could drive down to my work during the week and I can show you how I routed my wire externally. I've seen several people go the external A-pillar route too. Seems to work ok for them.

cruiserlarry wrote:Drill a hole through the roof...it's easy to do, easy to seal, and will give you a short easy path to the inside of the FJ.

Ok, that makes sense, especially since there will eventually be lights up there, but I'm slightly more than clueless. What do I need and how do I seal it? Searching for bulkhead grommet gives me rubber doughnuts. I'll do some digging around this morning and see what I can find when I make my Home Depot run.

OLLIE wrote:Think for the future if you do though. Drill it large enough to route more wires later when you decide to put lights up there. If you'd like, you could drive down to my work during the week and I can show you how I routed my wire externally. I've seen several people go the external A-pillar route too. Seems to work ok for them.

What's your best guesstimate on how large it should be? FunJunkie over at SoCal sent me something that shows how to get the A-pillar piece off. If I can figure out the bulkhead thing today, I may just do that.

smslavin wrote: What's your best guesstimate on how large it should be? FunJunkie over at SoCal sent me something that shows how to get the A-pillar piece off. If I can figure out the bulkhead thing today, I may just do that.

On how large to make the hole, it would depend in how many lights you envision on your roof rack. Below ia a picture of my wire bundle I pulled through my roof rack. I'm guessing you want a hole large enough to accomodate a bulkhead fitting with 1" to 1.25" inside diameter. Larry has done a bunch of the bulkhead style roof wiring. He would probably have a better idea. I did mine a little differently in that I was able to go through the roof under the rack mount and seal it up to make it clean looking. When I get my new rack I'll have to do something different. For the best answer I'd call Larry and discuss it with him (310-390-9086).

Coolest, thanks Ollie.

I guess if I'm going to drill a hole, I might as well go with a permanent NMO mount, yes? Looks like I'll be making a run over to HRO sometime this week.

smslavin wrote:Coolest, thanks Ollie.

I guess if I'm going to drill a hole, I might as well go with a permanent NMO mount, yes? Looks like I'll be making a run over to HRO sometime this week.

Make sure you have a place to put a NMO mount that won't cause the antenna to interfere with the roof rack...

And I do not recommend running any wiring down the A-pillar, as clearance is very limited, and flex and abrasion can cause damage to the wiring over time...

cruiserlarry wrote:Make sure you have a place to put a NMO mount that won't cause the antenna to interfere with the roof rack...

And I do not recommend running any wiring down the A-pillar, as clearance is very limited, and flex and abrasion can cause damage to the wiring over time...

Hmm. The BajaRack pretty much covers the entire roof. Would it be bad to have the antenna come up between the cross bars in the rack? Are there other options?

Well, this has taken forever but it's finally getting done. We moved out of our little apartment about 6 weeks ago so I finally have a garage and a place to work on the truck. Yesterday, I got the radio mounted. The faceplate is attached to the headliner via a piece of 2x4 that I epoxied to the roof.





The main radio unit is under the driver's seat.



Today, I ran the cable for the GPS unit. I took some of the dash apart then pulled the radio and the gauge pod. I made a little cut out on the frontside of the pod (near the windshield) for the cable to come out. I'm going to take some double sided tape and put the GPS unit on the gauge pod facing the windshield. Looks like it should have a pretty good view of the sky from there.

All that's left is to connect the power and set up the antenna. Still not sure where to put it though. The BajaRack covers the whole roof. I'm considering drilling a hole for the NMO mount in the middle near the front, maybe a foot or so back from the windshield. This would put the antenna between the cross bars of the rack and just behind the fairing. Is that a bad spot? Where else could I put an antenna? I don't want it in the back near the CB, right?

Very nice...what did you decide to do with the antenna ?