dash lights on when keyed up

[mickfowler]

i had a kenworth w900 with my general lee and a boomer 400 that was putting out 525 and wilson 1000 ant. my question is when i had boomer in high power the dash lights would flash on while i was keyed up but were not on when it was not keyed. if i ran boomer in low power the dash lights were very faint if any. i took boomer out and went barefoot after that. i just bought a 2006 t800 dump truck and want to install boomer in it but i dont want to burn up electronics in truck or lights flashing on dash. how do you install without lights flashing or burning up computer in truck. i dont know if it was a urban legend but you hear stories of computers in trucks frying because of amps on radios. thanks for any suggestions.

 

[nomadradio]

It's not an urban legend. The Boomer is much like most amplifiers meant for the CB market. It lacks filtering to keep stray RF power from leaking out the red and black power leads. Even if only 1 percent of the transmit power leaks out the red wire, that's like hooking the antenna socket of a barefoot radio to feed staight into your wiring harness.

The computer gadgets in most vehicles don't contain much filtering to keep RF from leaking into them from the wiring harness.

Best way to avoid this problem is to run a separate hot and ground wire from the battery to the amplifier. It's important to place a fuse or breaker AT the point where you tap off the battery juice. The fuse on the amplifier is not sufficient by itself. The fuse placed at the battery end of your 'direct' power lead serves to protect the wire, if it gets grounded, and to prevent it from setting the vehicle on fire if the insulation is cut or the wire gets pinched by grounded metal.

The battery tends to serve as a filter. The separate ground wire direct to the battery prevents the truck's computer devices from 'sharing' the amplifier's ground circuit.

It's the cheapest and simplest way around this problem.

73

 

[Metal Head]

Being that I'm a truck mechanic I've seen it a hundred times. The driver will hook up his radio and box to the accessory terminals on the dash or plug it into a cigarette lighter. They need to go to the battery. This will relate too the previuos post talking about it feeding back through the hot wires. If that's not the case try moving the antenna to a location father away from the computer.