Rear mounted spare tire Antenna/Jerry can mount

[axlesandantennas]

I’ll have to edit this later as I’m on my phone and formatting is a little weird.

Here is my home brew quasi military rear tire Antenna and Jerry Can mount.

I bought the antenna mount from a mil surp store. I believe it’s for a humvee but I guess it does not matter. The two Jerry cans are the 10 liter/ 2.5 gallon type. Little bit bigger than the roto pax and a lot less expensive.

The horizontal bar is 1 inch channel aluminum from the local hardware store. The backing plate behind the antenna mount is aluminum sheet from amazon. I ordered a 12x12 inch of 1/8 and cut to size. The flat bar is aluminum that I bent to shape. Everything is held together with aluminum pop rivets.

The back of the c channel stuff has some edge guard on it like you would put on a door edge.

I fabed a piece of aluminum that sits on the carrier by the three bolts and worked up the spacing for the bolts to go from the back of the wheel to the front of the plating. Just enough to pressure to slightly squeeze the mount into the tire.

After all the bolts and stuff were put on the actual antenna mount, I then spray the heck out of it with bed liner.

Works very well, looks GI Joe, and is different. I do need to add grounding straps from the mount to the tail gate to get a better ground.

 

[prerunner1982]

Looks great. I also have that mount I have been holding on to, I will use it eventually.
If you are just looking for trail comms a NGP (No Ground Plane) antenna may be a good option for that mounting setup/location.
Also if the antenna is short, the metal cans, metal wheel, and metal in the tire in close proximity to the tire may cause a higher than anticipated SWR.

 

[axlesandantennas]

Right you are with the SWR. Once everything but the grounding straps were done, I ran my buddies antenna analyzer on both my 4 foot antenna and 102 inch whip. Got it dialed in for “good enuf”. No need to go for the magical 1:1 as anything below 2:1 is fine with modern radios.

I have a fairly good spread until the band edges on the CB freqs. For me, I mainly listen anyhow.

Once I get the IC-7200 mounted in a way that does not look dumb or dangerous, I’ll mount a base mounted tuner to the 102 whip which will get me from 40 to 6 meters.

I have a vhf/uhf Antenna to mount on the front bumper but have been dragging my feet about buying a 2m/440 rig.

 

[DaveInDenver]

Looks cool. I like the concept. Might be a little concerned about using rivets and eventually the whole thing developing some movement, but nothing some bolts and lock nuts wouldn't solve if it happens. Or a friend with a TIG welder.

 

[axlesandantennas]

Looks cool. I like the concept. Might be a little concerned about using rivets and eventually the whole thing developing some movement, but nothing some bolts and lock nuts wouldn't solve if it happens. Or a friend with a TIG welder.

I was a bit concerned with the rivets as well, so I bought some fairly heavy duty ones but cannot for the life of me remember the thickness. Aaaannnnndddd since this is not attached to the Jeep all the time, it will not get super usage to cause lots of wear. Had I been making this for daily usages, I certinally would have found a TIG person and had them weld it up.

 

[DaveInDenver]

Yup, makes sense. Just something that occurred to me. It's kind of the meeting of several things, shock & vibration off road, two fairly heavy cans, a long whip flopping back and forth. That's something that I realized early on, that the forces you put on stuff while four wheeling are 5 times worse than you expect sitting there chin scratching in your garage.