After much deliberation I decided to pull the trigger on a ham radio and figured as long as I have everything apart I might as well chuck a CB unit in too.

I ended up with a Yaesu 7900R amateur radio that included a free remote head mount kit from Ham Radio Outlet. A comet antenna mount paired with a Diamond NR770HB dual band antenna. The guys there are the best and willing to help you dial in what equipment to get to meet your needs without over selling you.
The CB radio, Cobra 75 wx st, I picked up from Fry's and a firestik II 3' antenna along with firestik bumper mount (pic of that didn't turn out).

First, lets find a place to run all our cables through the firewall.  Grommet was fixed after photo.


This is the comet ham antenna mount installed on the ARB bumper, don't forget to grind off the powder coating underneath for a good ground!


Hmm, what's behind here?


Oooh, lots of space.  Originally I wanted to install both radios behind the heater controls but that space proved too tight.


Always inspect your equipment prior to install...thank you Cobra & Fry's for selling me a pre-broken fuse holder on my CB radio.


I didn't like having the fuse there anyway.  So I chopped it out, soldered it back together, will replace it with a blade fuse holder closer to the battery.


My fancy soldering station for putting the antenna end on the CB coax...no way was I getting that big connector through my firewall.


Here's the Cobra 75 all installed in my X, once the glove box is back in place all you'll see is the small dongle down by the tranny tunnel and when it's not in use I stuff it up inside.  It fit perfectly inside part of the dash support.


On to mounting the Ham radio...luckily that crossbar under the steering column is easily removable, made fabbing a bracket for the radio mucho easier.  A few bolts, some pop rivets for good measure and we have a solid mount built out of spare parts I had lying around.


Here is the radio installed on the mount


This is the view of how the radio will sit if you stuck your head under the dash once it's installed


Installed in the X


Modding the upper tray so I can run all my power cables and the control cable for the remote head for the ham radio behind the center console under the dash.


Tim Allen said it best...More Power!


After this pic showing the relocation of the fuses, I zip tied them together then covered all the wires in 1/2" wire conduit that fit nicely next to the stock covering.


Since the 2nd gens specifically state not to ground anything back to the battery I put this multi-ground unit together


Here's the dash all put together with the ham installed, nothing to see other than my driving light switch for the IPF's, the blue switch for my rack mounted back up lights, stock roof light switch.


Here's how it looks when I head out for the trail.  You can see the Magellan 1700 7" gps, right under it is the ham radio remote head, the left of the console is the mic for the ham and on the right is the cobra 75 handset.
The mic holders I simply drilled a pilot hole and used screws with some grip (after I pulled the console to check that I wasn't going to drill into something important!) if they eventually pull out I'll use bolts & washers but for now they are very secure.


Shot of the external speaker for the ham, it really sounds great with this since it's made specifically for radio installs and clips highs/lows.  Also scangauge II location.


Here's a shot of the antenna's mounted on the ARB with Mt Adams in the background, on the left is the Firestick II, on the right is the Diamond NR770HB.  I remove both when I'm not on the trail or using the radios.


The radios both work great and the install turned out super clean which made me very happy.

I didn't get any pics of the remote mount install to the upper tray but all I did was drill a couple holes and used some washers and nylon nuts to secure it.  The remote head hardly has any weight.

In case it wasn't clear, all connections are soldered and heat shrinked as I personally hate crimped or splicing connectors which will eventually corrode and fail.

The gps mount is nothing more than a folded & pop riveted piece of sheet metal using the 3 4 5 rule with a hole cut in the face to hold the gps mount then I stuck two 2" sheet of velcro to the bottom which holds it to the upper tray.  I went over some serious obstacles this past weekend and nothing came loose or fell off.

I love the fact that I no longer have cigarette plug wires running all over the cabin nor any gobs of wires hanging here & there from under the dash though I love that it all works as it is supposed to as well!

Jay-

Killer write up and install. It was nice to "chat" via HAM while on the trail last weekend. I gotta get off my rear and get a mobile installed in my rig. The hand held drives me nuts while driving the rig.

Dustin

Very nice install Jay, Thanks for the pics and taking the time to post!

Thanks guys.

Mike, Nissan uses some kind of voltage sensing circuit on the negative battery cable so the computer can control the alternator output.  If you directly ground back to the battery it by-passes that circuit and you will eventually end up with a battery that is barely charged.

I used the radio in scan mode, listening to highway patrol and aircraft frequencies, on my drive and had no noticeable interference.
That is also one of the reasons I put in those mondo anderson powerpoles on my winch so that it isn't grounded back to the battery at all times, the other reason was that I was just paranoid about vandalism but after about a year I see that was more an urban myth than likely scenario.

Both radio manuals recommend power & ground straight from the battery of course they don't worry about vehicle or installation specific problems.  I'm still trying to figure out the Yaesu with all it's multi-mode buttons and sparse display it's kind of tricky to learn.  It's one of those things that will just take a couple of hours in the driveway because trying to figure it out at 60mph on the highway just wasn't happening lol.