CB Wiring Question

I bought a new Cobra CB and am going to wire it into my xj, but I got a question. It has a red, orange and black wire coming out of the back, I'm wanting to wire it directly to the battery so I can just turn it on and off whenever, now in the book it says the red goes to an accessory 12v fuse and orange goes to a constant 12v fuse, or direct to battery and black is of course ground wire. Can I just wire the red and orange to positive terminal and black to my negative terminal?

Yes, but it will not be switched to the ignition, which means you will have to manually turn it off. If you are as frequently absent-minded as I am, this could lead to a dead battery. But, you could also just wire both hot wires to an acc source. Then it would be switched. But you would lose any memory functions (like a car stereo), although I'm not aware of any Cobra radios that have any, so I really don't know why it would matter. You can also buy, at most any truck stop, a power cord that combines the red and orange wires into just one red wire, if it has the standard 3-prong connector in theback of the radio. This would be the same power cord that comes with most radios. In my big truck, I run a linear amp. I have the radio wired to an acc source, so it is switched off by the ignition, and the amp is wired to the battery. Now and then I forget to turn it off, but since the truck has 3 large capacity 24-volt batteries and a killer alternator, it hasn't yet caused a problem.

4x4ever said:

I bought a new Cobra CB and am going to wire it into my xj, but I got a question. It has a red, orange and black wire coming out of the back, I'm wanting to wire it directly to the battery so I can just turn it on and off whenever, now in the book it says the red goes to an accessory 12v fuse and orange goes to a constant 12v fuse, or direct to battery and black is of course ground wire. Can I just wire the red and orange to positive terminal and black to my negative terminal?

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You asked can I wire the red and orange wires together.........of course you can it's yours isint it???

If you don't run the orange wire to constant hot, everytime you shut the CB off it will back to channel 1. If it has a wether function it will not remember the weather channel you have in your area.

you may lose the channels if it is a digital unit, no problem if uses dials

Sounds like a great way to kill your battery, but like these guys said, yeah you can do it.

I simply hard wired mine to a constant voltage source and used the in-line fuse supplied.

I wouldn't worry too much about leaving it on. You'll get used to it and turn it off when you get out.

Plus, it's nice being able to turn it on while you are off-roading without using the key.

Plus leaving the CB on draws very little power. Its not like leaving your headlights on... You could probably leave the cb on overnight and still have power to start in the morning.

the orange wire may go into a noise supressor internally , for ignition interference ( possibly not just for memory functions ) . and the red would just switch it on / off with the ignition .

i know that when i got a cheap cobra 19 @ wallyworld , it did not like my msd ignition and whined so bad i had to get rid of it .
wound up getting a cobra 29 with all of the built in noise filters and it's much better .

Your best bet with a CB is to ALWAYS wire it straight to the battery. The orange wire can most likely be left out. When you wire it to the ignition you can get a lot of interferance noise, such as alternator whine, windshield wiper buzz...etc...GROUND FAWKIN EVERYTHING!!!! Even your mounting bracket if you can. Anything near or connected to the cb you should ground. Will give you a much cleaner sound and signal. Also when you get everything hooked up you need to go to a CB shop and get your standing waves checked with a SWR meter. Too much standing waves will fry your CB pretty fast. SW can be adjusted by tuning a tunable antenna or shorting and lenghening your coax!......Also use a good brand coax......hope that helps

if you wire staight to the battery then orange and red go together.

if you wire red to ignition then orange goes to battery or constant 12v.

orange is only for your cb channel memory ,has nothing to do with filtering.