Installing Dual Band Icom IC-208 ham radio in the 2006 Monte Carlo

Chat on the road, monitoring and safety. Gotta have a transceiver in the car. Since this car is the first 'all mine' car in a while (since having a company truck..) I am having fun personalizing it and not worrying about others driving it.

Son says the setup makes it look like some kind of undercover narc car.

First step was to route power to the radio location - under the passenger seat. I could have went from the battery straight to the mount point, but I wanted to plan for the future. Linear amp, giant subs, who knows. I'm running some 4 gauge wire from the battery all the way to the trunk.

12 volts at the battery post of the fuse block, added my own 30A fuse.

Fusebox covered. My power lead follows the rest of the bundle .  .

 . . and in the fender.

Wire enters cabin through the door wiring grommet. I took this route instead of through a floor grommet. Might regret it, I think the right speaker is picking up alternator noise.

Power wire is high & dry here. Runs down behind fuse panel and along rocker

Easy route along the rocker

Under the harness

This was my halfway point

To get to the trunk without pinching the wire the back seat cushion needs to come out. The strip with the baby seat symbols pulls out.

Need an 18mm socket for this .

Two bolts hold the seat in. The front edge snaps into the floor.

Seat out. Yecch! Who was eating crackers back there?

At least there is some found money with the cracker crumbs.

This is the way to the trunk. There is no grommets or other obstructions. Push the wires up to the trunk.

Dress up the wire

Put the insulation back on.

Cable ties secure the power wire.

Back in the trunk, the wire follows the harness.

I am going to use the XM Radio bracket as a fuse point. Here the power wire shadows the harness.

Here is the fuse panel and ground block.

Powerfeed to the fuse panel

Secure the wire.

Testing the install. We have power to the trunk!

Now to get down to radio stuff. The antenna is a Larson dual band gain antenna with a trunk lip mount. In order to keep the antenna from hitting the glass, it is mounted of to the side.

Antenna clears the glass.

Follow the 3rd brake light wires to get to the trunk without pinching the coax or creating leaks to the trunk.

This grommet was big enough to let the cable through

Coax to the cabin

Back inside, solder the connector on.

Power cable to the radio. The fuse block accepts smaller gauge wire with an adaptor.

Seen it before? Along the wire harness, down under the back seat.

Dress the wiring with cable ties.

Replace the trunk liner. Sano!

Back where the dirt and cracker crumbs are, the power lead and coax emerge.

I diverted the power and coax to the rocker panel path to keep the power wire short as possible. Really, it would not reach if I went the other way along the harness.

The old needle nose plier in the seat track. Keeps the seat all the way forward.

 

Remove the seat bolt cover, the coax and power leads go to the radio mount pont.

Power lead for the radio.

Radio bracket. Yes, it's nerve wracking to drill into a floor.

Bolt in the radio

Attach the power and antenna coax

Smoke test. The control panel can be used on the radio face or remote mounted.

The remote cable was another where I had to take shortcuts to conserve cable length. Here it goes beneath the carpet under a seat track trim piece.

Heads up by the kick panel

Routed behind the fuse panel

Tied once to this massive metal thing that is behind a snap off end panel.

Cable snakes around the windshield pillar and up.

Exits at the center over the mirror.

Another smoke test. It works!

Eventual mounting point, under the overhead console.

For now, this will do :)

Speaker lead follows the control wire.

Speaker and it's wire under the dash

No, not going to drill here. We'll do the Velcro-Fly.

Speaker stuck to the heater box.

Sound comes out here.

Still need to mount that control head without paying $75 for an Icom bracket, and move the speaker closer to the console.