1954 Chevy Pickup | Side Mount Antenna

August 28th, 2003 : Dual Side-Mount Antenna

When I got my truck it had a motorized antenna mounted on the top-cowl, passenger side ... if you happened to leave the antenna up when you opened the hood, the antenna would've been destroyed by the hood. Whoever mounted it there must not have taken their medication that day because, aside from that blunder, the antenna-motor sat under the glovebox where you could bang your knee on it ... and if you drove in the rain, the water-collector tube would dump the water from outside right on your feet. Brilliant.

My solution was inspired by a 1954 GMC truck I saw that had an antenna mounted on the side-cowl, driver side. This isn't the original stock antenna for a '54 Chevy pickup ... maybe it was for the '54 GMC ... but I thought it was the coolest looking antenna, for a truck, that I had ever seen! And Chevy Duty had one, so I ordered it last week and installed it today.

NOTE!!:

not

Truck Shop

part #47-04401

1-800-243-8947

The problem, for me, with mounting it on the side-cowl (between the door and front fender) was two-fold -- first, the cowl isn't a straight 90-degree plane, so the antenna would sit tilted ... and second, it looks too cluttered there, right next to the mirror. So, as you can see, I opted to mount it on the back of the cab, driver side ... which also made it a simple matter to run the antenna wire away from the ignition wires, avoiding interference and noise from the engine (I ran the antenna wire under the seat, up the center of the firewall, to the radio).
truck antenna

I had to drill two half-inch holes in the cab-body to mount the antenna, and I did that by eye -- by running a three-foot to four-foot long strip of masking tape, vertically, along the side of the cab, I stood at a distance to see if it looked straight. Not a very scientific approach, I admit, but I have an artist's eye and, after repositioning the tape once or twice, I was satisfied ... drilled my two holes, mounted the antenna ... and it worked! The antenna sits nice and straight and picks up all the radio stations very nicely -- if I pull the antenna out to it's fullest, it measures seven and a half feet tall!!!

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