Anyone have a picture of the roof of a regular cab pickup with the headliner down? I want to mount a 2m radio up there but want to know what is under there before I start taking it down.

 

IIRC there are no airbags up there on an '08.

 

The one things I will mention to you about mounting up there is to make sure that it is more to the middle and away from your direct line of sight. One of the work trucks was hit in a almost head on collision (this was in an ext cab truck ) the force of the collision snapped the vhf from its mounting bracket and hurled it right into the side of his face.

The guy got a huge cut right above his eye that required a fair amount of stitching but it looked like he was in a boxing bout as he got a black eye and lots of swelling and bruising. He had some pretty good headaches for about a week.

After that our safety chick had our maintenance guys remove any of the radios that were mounted above moved and relocated them -just below the heater controls etc if you didnt have the drop down cup holder thing or to a base mount attached to the floor hump

 

If it were me, I think I'd find a wrecked 05 - 07 truck with the overhead console and install your Radio in that. You may have to trim the radio opening depending on how big it is. The other option would be to make a nice overhead console out of ply wood, stain it and clear it over with some poly coat. I did that back in the 80's when I installed an aftermarket Bose and my Cobra CB, so it had a Double Din console. up on the headliner.

 

I was too quick: you said you wanted the radio overhead and I heard antenna overhead. I'm an advocate of NMO mounts thru the roof and I heard what I wanted to hear. Sorry I added noise to the discussion.

n4lbl

 

Radio mounted safely under dash.

 

That's one of the spots I mentioned in a earlier post above where are safety chick got the maintenance guys to move radios to if the truck didnt have the drop down cup holder. other wise it was a mount to the hump and the radio attached to that Nice clean install btw

 

That is where I mounted my radio. The only thing about this looking down at display to see what frequency I’m on.

 

I agree that with the radio mounted low like this, I have to look away from the road to see the channel/frequency I am on, however generally while on the road the radio is on a specific channel/frequency for whatever task I am performing or area I am in. When I do need to change them, I wait until I can stop and pay attention to the radio for a minute.

Another advantage of the radio being mounted like this is that it is accessible to anyone in the truck ( standard cab ) so often times the co pilot is the radio operator.

 

If you need to make an overhead console, consider using ABS plastic.
It is relatively cheap, strong and very easy to work with,

 

I have a regular cab with a standard transmission no room to mount it down low like shown.

 

Does the face plate detach from radio? I've had several pickups with manual transmissions and two way mounted low like shown in the pictures.

If the face comes off, mount that where you can see it. Then put the main part of the radio behind the seat or under the seat.

 

This setup is in FTE member's kellyfromva rig. You could always send him a message and see if you can find out where he purchased his mount from

His post is in this thread here:

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...o-install.html

 

the older trucks ( 1990's ) had outer and inner metal skins of roof...... remove third brake light to verify on the newer trucks...

if double skins... use short sheet metal screws to prevent damage to outer skin of roof...

N8BSJ, had my Kenwood mounted up there. right of the rear view mirror.

 

I ended up remote mounting the head above my mirror and running the body down under the middle seat of my pickup, the CB is then mounted into the plastic and a remote speaker for the ham radio is in a spot where there was a garbage piece of plastic that was serving no need.

In my old 94 f250 I had a full sized Cobra 29 mounted trucker style in the middle of the cab, used 1inch long self tapping screws and 4 of them