I’m doing this build a little out of order… Typically I would address safety and recovery right out of the box, and then go after suspension and whatnot. In my own defense, the First Aid kit was thrown under the rear seat the day it was brought home, so that box was in fact czeked. But, I’m still noodling on roll cage and winch mount ideas. In the meantime, I wanted to get some communications enabled so I started looking for a place in the sea of plastic that is the JK dash, to put a CB radio. I have 3 basic requirements for CB radio placement:
1.) I am not a LEO, so I will not have my CB top / center on the dash stack
2.) I am not a truck driver, so I will not have my CB hanging overhead with the cord in my face all day
3.) I am not a barbarian, so I will not have my CB slapped on the side of the center console at some weird angle for my passenger’s shin to enjoy all day long
So, I took a hard look at the center console and started some exploratory mining to determine what lies beneath. As luck would have it, and similar to the LJ, the center console is primarily empty in the section right below the dash. I carefully pulled everything apart, laid it all out, and performed some plastic surgery:
For some reason, the JK has a two-piece console, so I had to cut the upper and lower sections separately:
And here it is back together with the hole carved out and the sharp plastic edges tidied up with door edge molding (sorry for the crummy focus):
I have not fabricated the actual mounting brackets yet, as I still need to get the CB wired up, but that will be EZPZ once brown Santa delivers the rest of the gear.
Here they are saying hello/goodbye to one another:
