At the moment my “car” radio is a Yaesu VX-7R HT.
For a while I thought about getting the JDM Spec.B dash kit that turns the GPS slot into a double DIN socket. This would make a great radio room. But that and the part to move the driver’s computer to the ashtray slot would cost me about $500. So instead I’ll probably get two new radios with remote faces and mount the faces to the GPS pocket.
So far the idea is to get an Icom IC-2820 multiband transmitter and a Uniden BCD996T scanner. I really like Yaesu radios, but in this case I think the Icom will suit the car better. Uniden makes a remote face for the scanner, which is not very expensive; I’ve seen it online for around $100.
Then I was planning to mount the radio bodies to the rear of the vehicle, possibly in the spare tire well. This would also shorten and simplify the routing of the shaft cables to the roof.
For the antennas I was considering screwing L brackets with NMO mounts to the sides of the roof rack rails. From what I’ve read on this board about people running power cables to roof mount lights, I suspect it should be possible to run the LMR-400 cable through the rack using the existing holes in the roof.
My current car setup (in the wife’s Mini Cooper hahaha) is an Icom IC-2200H 2m receiver and an Icom R-1500 broadband comm receiver. They go to a small cowl mounted duck antenna through a doubler I salvaged from an old Harris milcomm radio.
