Reviews for Quadratec Extreme Duty Stainless CB Radio Antenna Rear Tailgate Mount with 48" Antenna for 18-21 Jeep Wrangler JL
Good design. Nice and solid. I used one like this on a JK for several years with good results. The ground lead was extended with more wire and attached directly to the grounded terminal of the battery. Great results: SWR of 1.2 to 1.5. However, on my JL, the antenna has SWR of 3.4 to 4. I suspect that the ground lead is inadequate. The instructions would have you attach the ground to a grounding screw located behind the trim panel on the passenger side at the rear. The first dealer to install this, while doing other work, attached it there, but left the paint on the ground screw, thinking the nut would scrape the paint off. The second dealer "fixed" it by scraping the paint off and reattached the ground lead in the same place. Not much improvement. I tried a different antenna. Same thing. Beware: the installer took the antenna and leads off the mounting plate and put them on the plate for the trail flag, then mounted that on the right side. This gave the spare extra clearance that it didn't need, and put the antenna closer to the tail gate, which may be part of the problem. Also, he may have over-torqued the bolt that holds the "fire-ring" antenna connection to the top of the mounting plate, damaging the RF connection. I'll edit this review after I find out what is wrong.
Installed antenna. But can't test on trail because Quadratec is unable to fulfill my Smittybilt winch order of two months ago. Seems like Smittybilt is having problems making or shipping their product to Quadratec. Been waiting two months for the X2O. I recieved emails weekly of shipping dates that come and go. Quadratec is loosing their customer vision with the "canned " response emails. Hey guys, the emails don't work. I have no product. Christopher said my order would ship on 9/10 . It is 9/13 and no winch. What's up?
Very high quality kit, but the instructions are not terrific. Its based off a sport model with no camera. If you have a subwoofer and the backup camera you'll need to improvise a bit. The gear it comes with is all terrific and I'm totally happy.
Installation was fairly straight forward and ran the cable as instructed with no real issues at all. The BIG issue came when I reinstalled the spare and realized the antenna does not fit due to the overhang of the tire. This is a off road version but factory size tire. I was happy up until the point that I realized this will not work with a spare tire for some reason. Maybe it will require spacers between spare and mount. The tires again are the same size as factory but rugged tread. Any suggestions would be great!
While the parts quality was fine, I did have to bend the bracket to move the antenna closer to the rear window because the (stock) spare tire overhung the antenna mount. Otherwise happy with this kit!
The mounting bracket is great, I really love the location it puts the Antenna. The grounding wire is really nicely made but way too long. My issue is with the 18' antenna cable, I got mine all installed and had an SWR reading of 7. Nothing I did changed it, I ended up testing the cable and it tested bad. I got ahold of Quadratec and told them what was going on, that the cable was bad from the start. They sent me a whole new kit, I just needed the wire. Tested the wire immediately and it tests bad, I went ahead and ran it outside the Jeep to the CB just to verify and still getting an SWR of 7. Now I'm trying to see if I can just return the whole thing. I'd happily just take a functioning antenna cable as I've got a lot of time invested in my install as I didn't want to see any wires in my Jeep, I just don't know if that can happen.