My CB recently died a crappy death and I need to send it in to get fixed... So when my buddy Matt (SLOMAtt) said that RadioShack was clearing out it's in car FRS models, I droped by to get one.

They are $15 at stores that have then in stock right now. Don't bother looking for them on their site or asking a store to order them in, they are trying to get rid of the last of them. I guess they didn't sell very well...

Anyways these are great for off-roading and have better range than the hand-held units.

Those are pretty good radios. Works well with handheld Motorolas too. I've had mine for two years now, bought it way back when RS was selling them at $29. I'll check our local store and see if they still have them. At $15, its a steal!

I have a few of those myself. They work great! Much better than hand held FRS radios. I picked them up at Radio Shack for $29 last year.

I bought mine last year, too. My brother needed to borrow it a few weeks ago and discovered it wasn't working, so I had to do some minor wire surgery on the power plug end. Whatever you do, don't put anything heavy on the power adapter plug because the tiny power wires inside might get chopped in half by the little circuit board inside.

Heck, if it's down to $15, now, I think I'll just go buy a second unit.

Just bought my second unit today at RS! My wife might think I don't need two mobile FRS but I might be able to sell it on ebay in the future.

I bought two on Satruday. This thing works great. Great deal two. I found that my local radio shack folks did not have a clue about what I was talking about. (Nothing new) It turns out that this particular unit is known to them as a Mobile/Marine not an FRS unit. Anyway, I finally got it across what I was looking for and they just happened to have two left in their back sotrage room. :p So if at first you don't succeed; try, try again. Good luck.

Yeah, I picked up two, too. Same story here: their computer showed they had 3 in stock but they had no idea what the heck it was; turned out they were in the back.
Haven't really tried it out yet but I like the idea of not having to worry about batteries.
Thanks for the heads up on this!

OK. So now I have this FRS Mobile/Marine which is pretty cool, but I need to mount it somewhere and run the very long antenna cord somwhere out of sight and out of the way. How difficult is it to pull the cover off of the support column in between the driver door and the passenger door? I think I can route the antenna under the floor carpet and up the support column and out to the roof of the X.

Has any one tries this with this or any other device?

Currently I plug my power adapter into the power outlet behind the center console. This works well but I need a good spot to mount the hand set. Any suggestions? I thought about drilling into the center console at the back, but then you have to practically cimb in the back seat to get the hand set out. I'm open to ideas.

Check out Snoopy's mod on his site:
Snoopy\'s X
The interior mods show the pic but you can email him for the step by step.

gmaxis, thanks for the link! That is exactly what I am looking to do. I sent Xsnoopy some mail, so we will see how it goes.

Hey Dos,
Did you gain any insight into this?
I'm wondering if/how he extended the handset cord from the FRS power plug (i.e. splice in longer wire, etc...).
If you've already inquired w/him, I don't want to email him about the same thing....

I just bought mine at the RS near the corner of Stevens Creek and Saratoga. They had at least 6 more on the shelf and maybe more.

Supposedly you can get the wire to extend the handset from radioshack. The article I read said it requires making 32 connections at each splice point. I bought an extra FRS radio last week, I'm going to open it up and see what the deal is, I'll post the results on here.

- Matt

Hey guys,

I have not been able to get on line for a while, but here is what I got from snoop yesterday.

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I should have taken some photos and desribed the process of installing the FRS radio on the website but time is short these days.

All right,

If you take apart the power section of the Radio Shack FRS you can see that two of the leads provide the power. I think its RED and BLACK. There are also 10 or so other leads that run from the MIC to the antenna. These are the leads that need to be lengthened using small conductors. I lengthened them such that I would have enough length to place the antenna on the roof where it runs along the weather seal on the drivers rear side door, down along the B-pillar (front seatbelt), down to the floor, under the driver seat, to the center console, where it is hard wired into the aux power relay in the center console. From there the wire runs along the underside of the driver seat down along the left under the doorsill and to the A-pillar from the floor.

At the pillar I just ran the cord through and out one of those holes used for the hold handle (removed). The hole for the upper mounted handle is where I glued the holder for the FRS radio.

The job is rather quite extensive and involved an afternoon of soldering about 25-30 connections. I enjoy stuff like that so it wasn't too big of a deal for me.

I do have a problem however; about a year later my FRS radio would send but not receive voice so I fear that one of the connections have come lose. In fact, since you reminded me, I'm going to go find out about it tonight.

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I hope to do this mod before the X-terra championsip. We will see.

Dos Equis,
Thanks for the info. I think I found my next project. I recently bought 3 of these, one for me, my dad, and....my camper????
Dan