There were alot of things I didn't get pictures of, mostly because I was doing alot of the work at night to beat the Phoenix heat.
First antenna install, I decided to go ahead with the NMO mount on the roof, thou I did run extra coax through the cab to under the hood if I decide to move it to a different mount.
first I made the hole, I drilled a small hole and then used a 3/4 inch greenlee chassis punch to make the final hole, made it nice and clean. Also used a magnet to clean up all the metal shavings you see.
Here it is from inside the cab, I used my dremel with a sander on it to remove some of the paint/coating around the hole on the inside to make sure I had a good counterpoise. Some people say to remove some paint around the top of the hole... but that side has a rubber o-ring, the bottom is where you will get the connection.
finished product on the roof. Just realized I didn't get a picture with the antenna on yet, will have to do that.
I came up with a crazy idea for mounting my microphone, this is a keystone wall plate with a keystone phone plug in it, I chopped the wall plate down with the dremel
Another view
I then put a hole in one of the trim pieces in a place that is not visible and superglued the jack to the trim piece. As you will see in future pictures this is completely not visible from the cab once installed.
I then ran cat5 cable from the jack back to the radio and put a 6 conductor phone plug on the other end. This lets me plug the mic in a convenient place with no visible jack, or splicer. Without the mic plugged in the only way to know it is there is to reach under and feel the hole.
I ended up mounting the radio directly to the back wall, was going to do something fancier but this just worked out better. If I have the radio off later I will take pictures of how I mounted it, if I remove the radio and bracket there are just 4 nice looking trimmed holes.
as you can see there is plenty of room behind the seat and it should get decent air movement. The ac in the back also blows from under the center seat and at least some of the air goes under the back seat and up the back.
Still have some wire management to do just back at the radio but this is how I have it coming out of the trim, from here it either goes up(in the case of the nmo or one of the head cables) or goes down under the door opening trim and up to the front ( everything else). Power is 10AWG zip line, run straight to the battery fused on both sides. All power connections are anderson powerpoles. All head connections ( I ran 2) are just cat 6 cables picked up from the electronics store ( I could have made these but really not worth the effort and I didn't have any black cable laying around.
Here is where I mounted the head unit and I like it, I think it will stay here. I had to make a bracket which I thought I got a picture of but apparently didn't, I may take it down next week to make it a little stronger and paint the bracket if I do I will get pictures then. The tricky things here were that the mounting screw was on the bottom of the head, the gps on the top and speakers on the side... and to play with the design to not block the gps or the speakers, but it worked pretty well. The bracket is made from sheet aluminum.
I ran a secondary head cable to the console below the radio, this was originally where I intended on mounting the head but was convinced to try up above. I figured for the extra $4 for a cable I would run both just in case, didn't want to have to mess with all the trim again if I don't have to. So for now this one will be hidden back in that cubby... if I take the cable out you wouldn't know it had been there unless you put your hand in that cubby felt the hole at the back on the top that the cable came through.
I have now had a few chances to test it out and everything works beautifully. Still fine tuning my repeater list, and still playing with some of the APRS (and other) settings. But getting good signal reports, while in Colorado I was at one point having a conversation on 2m over a repeater that was nearly 100 miles away from me. Clearly picked up some simplex traffic that was 40-50 miles away. All in all I am happy. Also I was skeptical at first about the location of the head unit, but I REALLY like it up above the mirror now that I have been running it for a while, I am glad that someone suggested that location.