I need to put a Motorola mototrbo radio in a caterpillar excavator. There is a nice place to mount the radio. They even have an antenna for me. However all of that is for a AM/FM radio. My Motorola radio will fit into the AM/FM radio spot perfectly. There is power, ground, and ignition already up there but the gauge is too small so I will run new wires to the battery and ignition source. The problem is the antenna. I can't use the existing antenna and there is no spot to mount an antenna. The roof is 2 inches of fiberglass. I am assuming there is steel under the fiberglass and above the headliner. What is a good spot to mount an antenna and what mount should I use? The mounts I use for a regular Ford truck won't come close to working in this instance.
I appreciate this is an old thread, and the OP may not see this, but I'm an installer.
Don't bother with a quarterwave for all of the above reasons, also are you sure the roof is fibreglass? All of the loaders/excavators etc I've ever worked on have had steel roofs (5mm+ thick - pain to drill) or ROPS (not allowed to drill into)
You should be able to run coax out one of the rear grommets for the lights, use one of the bolts for the lights to mount a Z-bracket onto. In fact a lot of ours have some sort of factory tracking aerial on it about 150mm thick.. CAT can track vehicle stats, remotely see faultcodes etc..
I know it's not wise, but sometimes you have no choice with a vehicle with ROPS on it, but to mount right next to that. Hopefully your TRBO is UHF which means a mopole will work fine, otherwise if it's VHF then just make sure you have clearance to get in and out of any sheds. Guarantee this will be 24 volt, but nearly all of the feeds i've ever checked in these have been more than enough to handle 7ish amps (most of our customers are running 25W - legal max in NZ) Don't bother running a feed to the battery, it'll be hell of a job to do.
