I've been meaning to get around to doing this for a while since I've been asked a couple of times now about how my radio is installed in the car. So I got my camera out this morning and took some photos. All of the pictures in this post are clickable so you can see a larger version, without making the page take ages to load to begin with...
The vehicle is a standard BA Falcon sedan, and the radio is a Yaesu FT-7800R with the separation kit so the head unit can be mounted remotely.
Here's how it appears, as you look into the car - it's fairly discreet, so it doesn't stand out too much.
The head unit sits in the tissue box holder, held in place with a strip of double-sided tape on the underside. A small hole was cut into the back of the tissue box holder for the separation kit cable to run through.
The speaker is from an old Nokia car kit - I haven't run the cable for that properly yet, it's just appearing over the top of the centre console and then under to the front passenger seat. I'll get around to tidying that up one day!
The cable runs under the centre console , re-appearing under the passenger seat, where the radio itself is mounted. The other cables that run here are power (direct from the car's battery) and the antenna cable. In each case, the cables run under the plastic trim. Like a lot of newer cars, they helpfully leave little channels here and there to run extra cables
This is the antenna on the outside of the car. It's a 2m/70cm dual band steel whip antenna which I bought from Andrews Communications in Sydney.
The antenna is mounted on a bracket made by GME which is specifically shaped for a BA Falcon which is handy... They make them in driver's or passenger's side configuration.
The antenna cable you can see above was run under some channel in the plastic grille, and it pokes out through a rubber elbow grommet and then cable-tied to handy bits of pipe-work to keep it all neat as it heads towards another grommet in the firewall so it can pass into the passenger cabin.
I decided I wanted the radio to be powered independently of the rest of the car's systems, so instead of taking the power from the accessories circuit, it has it's own wire running straight to the battery.
Of course the danger here is that you could leave the radio on and flatten the car battery overnight - so I've set the radio's timer to shut off after 1 hour of no use...
Again, the power cable is cable-tied to other cables or pipes running towards the grommet in the firewall, so that everything's nice and neat and not flapping around in the engine bay. The grommet has a hole expertly punctured in it with a screwdriver
And that's it!
Holes required to do this - two in the bodywork where the antenna bracket is mounted, one in the elbow grommet for the antenna cable, one in the grommet in the firwall for the antenna and power cables, and one in the back of the tissue box holder for the separation kit cable. Total of five
