GME XRS Connect UHF Installation & Demo #ShedSessions

I've got my MP300 in the garage. Today we're going to be talking about and installing two-way radio systems or commonly referred to as CB radio or UHF radio system guys. So the brand radio that I've chosen to use for today's installation is one that I'm extremely familiar with. That is GME. Now GME is a brand name that is recognized worldwide guys. I'm sure you know someone that's got one of these radios installed in their vehicle and they'll probably tell you that they absolutely love the thing. That's one thing they do very different to other radio brands. I find that they listen to the four-wheel drive industry, the four-wheel drive enthusiasts and they go this is what people are wanting, this is what they're talking about with radio systems and they put that into their research and development for their radios and they pack as many of those features as they can into their systems. There is a truckload of features that these come with guys. I hope that I even get enough time in this video to talk about them all. Installing a CB UHF radio on your four-wheel drive is something that I think should be top of your list and probably should have been sooner on my list on the installs on this vehicle. If you can communicate with other people in the convoy it's very very good for various reasons. Some of those reasons are for if you're on the four-wheel drive track and there's an obstacle coming up you can tell the person behind you what to expect. If someone's spotting you with a handheld device they can talk to you in the car and tell you what's going on outside the car very easily, but if you're in a convoy and you're driving along and there's oncoming traffic for instance you can tell people behind you hey watch out there's a couple of cars coming around the corner there's a couple of motorbikes coming up you know so everyone can slow down and move aside to let people go through. This kit in particular some of the features we'll talk about later they really put importance on the safety side of things. When you're off-roading you might not always have phone reception okay a lot of the time you find you don't have phone reception but with a CV radio you can always communicate with other people that have radio systems in their vehicles if you're in trouble and you need to get a helping hand from somebody. So having something like this will come in handy for various reasons but the safety feature is one of those things that it's very very needed when you go four-wheel driving or if you're in the outback and things like that. So let's crack on with the unboxing of the GME XRS Connect Outback Pack. Now this particular model is the XRS 330 COB model. This is Australian made and it carries a five-year warranty. On top we've got the XRS Connect quick start guide. Now we'll start by removing the first protective panel there that's exposing obviously some of the wiring bits and pieces. So the first one here we've got the actual control module itself this is a super compact unit guys so we can tuck this into so many areas in the car and it's super easy to hide out of the way and that's exactly what this particular kit is aiming for. It's a hideaway feature so you can make sure you put this into somewhere where you don't have to visually see it and it just plugs into there with a handheld device and we can just have the handheld exposed because that's got all of the options on the face of that unit there making things super easy and neat in the car. Now we've got the 2.1 dbi cb antenna okay so that's that one there which is included in the kit which is fantastic so that's got all the cabling on there as well with the connector on the other end there so we'll just pop that on a side for now. Okay we've got the mounting bracket for the control module okay so you can mount that on various different ways it should have the mounting accessories here that's the one there now also in this mounting accessories kit we've got the actual mount for the handheld device okay so the good thing about this one is they have the mounting screws supplied as well so if you want to screw it into the vehicle you can but they also have the double-sided tape here so if you don't want to screw this into your car if it's a new car or something like that you can use a double-sided tape it's a 3m now you can connect the handheld device straight up to the module by plugging in there if this is close enough but what they do supply in here is this is the extension cable here and then they've got these little plugs this harness here this cable clicks in one side and then the handheld device clicks in the other side okay so it's basically just an extension option if this control box is far away in the vehicle somewhere where it's hidden and the coiled cable doesn't quite reach all the way to it now we've got the 12 volt dc harness here so it's got a plug on one side there which plugs into the control box and then we've also got the inline fuse that that one there which has got a housing around it and then on the other end we've got our two wires two wires guys that is all this takes to install two wires we've got the power wire and we've got the earth wire the holy grail this unit has a really nice heavy duty coil lead on it there with a connector on one end and then you've got all of your features here with a soft touch button so really direct clicks as well when you're using them which is cool now this screen is something which no one else in the industry as far as my knowledge is doing it's an oled display so people like me which are super blind i can see this display really easily but it also means when it's in things like direct sunlight for instance it doesn't get affected by the sunlight like you would some of the other screens where you can't see what's going on now this handheld device also has the two uh the two watt speaker that's going to put out a really good uh really good um amount of sound and you're going to be able to hear what's going on and what's being said in the 370s this control box does come with a built-in speaker so that's two speakers one in the handheld and one in the control box so if you're in an older uh noisier vehicle or something like that it might be good to have the double speakers so you might want to look at the 370 kit instead okay guys so that is everything that's inside the box as you can see we've got everything we need here to get stuck into the installation now the aerial that you have will have a particular amount of cable length in it depends on which aerial you'll get will depend on probably the length of the cable but um that is going to need to reach the control box and same thing goes to the power wire so your control box this guy here wherever you position it into the vehicle you need to make sure that your cabling is going to reach this unit because everything goes to this box for me i'm going to be putting the aerial onto the bull bar right there now that's because i've got a great spot to put it on the ironman bar they've supplied an aerial location right there however if you have a roof rack on your car it might be a better idea to put it onto the roof rack now this is only for the reason of signaling now each area puts out a different type of signal bandwidth now this particular one the 2.1 dbi this puts out uh more of like a ball a big ball radius of signal round radius of signal which is great for hilly areas and up and down through poor drive tracks but its radius is shorter than say a six or a nine dbi aerial something like that which is going to be a skinnier longer beam it's going to shoot further which is fantastic for long flat roads or distance basically but the radius is not going to be as big where it reaches around the vehicle it's going to be more like that in a straight beam but regardless having it on top of the car is the best point because having my aerial right here basically the vehicle behind the aerial is going to block a little bit of the signal going out this aerial though it doesn't really matter so much because it is that big ball so it's still going to emit a really good signal regardless of being on the bull bar but that's just an idea for you guys some ideas on where to position it onto the car firstly take off the protective cap from the bottom here now it says there unhook cable before removing protective base and then from there you can just unscrew the base okay so what you need to do is you need to unscrew the nut and just let that fall down with the spring washer make sure the spring washer is underneath the mounting plate not up on top here okay so then you just need to put the cable through the guided slot in your mounting plate and mount it flush down onto that spot and then just push the nut and the spring washer up to the thread and you just need to start this one by hand first okay so for this particular aerial you'll need to grab yourself a 10mm open-ended spanner which will go on the flat section of the thread on the bottom and then a 19mm open-ended spanner to do up the nut on the top guys now your aerial mount might be in a little bit of a different position to mine so mine's over here on the passenger side of the bar so i'm going to run my cable on the back of my bar work here i'm just going to use some zip ties to hold it down and then i'm going to drop the cabling down here behind this support bracket and then in through behind the grille into the engine bay what i'm also going to do is run some split tubing over any of the exposed cable in the outside of the vehicle okay so i've finished routing the cable from the aerial into the engine bay so i've just jumped behind this tube here down onto this bracket down behind the grille and run the cable in a similar position i did to the rock light cabling behind the headlight and underneath this metal panel just all the way around underneath there cable tied up and all the way down to the grommet down the back there in the firewall just in that area which goes into the cab all that's left to do is to feed this through the firewall grommet down there into the cab so the best way to do that is to spray a little bit of lubricant on the cable itself so that it slides through the rubber grommet easily without binding up okay and then with a bit of luck it'll come through right there which is basically the through point for the firewall grommet so that's a cable there i've just managed to pull it through but up in there it's really hard to see and it's even harder to get your hand up in there that's where all the cables are coming through okay so go ahead and pull that cable all the way through once you're done as far as you can and then from there we're basically going to pull that cable behind the dash okay so you've fed your coax cable or your aerial cable through the firewall and into the cab perfect so we've got that ready to go straight up to the unit now the other thing we need to do is get power to the unit and a good earth supply so you can do a really simplistic way and use what's called a fuse jumper so this one here is made by narva and it basically just goes into a fuse location and it might pick up on a blank one or it might pick up on one that's already existing when you use this the only choice that you have to make is if you want constant power supply or accessory power supply the difference being that if you put into a constant your radio is always going to work even if the car's off if you put it to accessories the radio is only going to work if you have the accessories on with the keys in the accessory position so when the car sort of powers up things like that so it's up to you how you'd like to hook this one up but for me personally i'm going to be giving it constant power so even when the car's off if i'm off road or at a campsite and someone's trying to radio through to me the other thing that you could do if you've got a spare battery you can hook it up to that supply or you can even directly power this straight to your main battery in the vehicle if you wanted to do so okay so i've pulled out my glove box and i've got access to my fuse panel now i've just used a power tester to try and figure out what fuse does what you can also have a bit of a look on the glove box itself it will have a display showing you what fuses power which part of the vehicle but it sort of doesn't tell you if it's always going to be a constant or accessory power so i've just used a power tester and i figured out that this blank location right here below the two 10 amp fuses is actually a constant power supply and it's blank so i can just basically put that fuse jumper straight into there and that gives me my constant power supply okay so i'm just going to rip off this surround it's about five phillips head screws around the outside the reason why i'm doing that is because i'm going to pick up on the same earth location that i did for my racewise diff lock switch install which is just on a screw up above here which keeps everything nice and close to each other and i know that that's already a reliable earth just screw that back down and that is now the earth wire taken care of so now it's time to mount up the control box itself what we need to do is try and find a location to mount this little guy now it is very compact and you can probably put it in any location in the car that you really want to in this location in the center console you can actually just pull this piece up okay so this is your cup holder tray now that just lifts straight out with a few clips on the bottom it's not very hard to get to underneath that tray we have a lot of room in here which we could mount this control box itself so i'm just going to put some double-sided tape on there and then i'm just going to stick it down inside here on that piece of metal that's exposed there okay so i've just got the cabling from the fuse box area i'm just going to feed it up underneath this panel so all you need to do is just lift the side of this panel up and feed it straight underneath there like that and then from there you can just uh tuck it all the way along this panel and up behind here and you can go ahead and do the exact same thing with the coax cable that you fed through the firewall so now you've got your power and earth and your coax cable coming through into the cup holder area of your mp300 now again this is just an idea of where you can locate this unit you don't have to put it in this position guys completely up to you where you mount your control box so i'm just going to put these over here for now put them aside and i'm going to work on mounting the control box into that location i was talking about i've got some double-sided tape on that bracket on the bottom there ready to stick down i've wiped both surfaces ready to go so double-sided tape will stick now all you need to do is basically grab your connections plug them in so that one there up the front power and earth up the back and also the coax cable goes in there clicks into a pin and then you just need to use a thread there to screw it down and you will need to grab an eight millimeter spanner just to nip that one up properly look you don't have to go overly tight with the cable just nipping it up so it's not going to come loose on you that's all alrighty so that's all done let's go ahead and mount this into position it's in there perfectly actually like it was made for it this is just your airbag control box back here so you do want to make sure that the cables are running sort of neatly around the outside you don't want to cause any dramas with that that's obviously a critical part of the vehicle and then just neatly tuck all the other cables around like that it's got plenty of room there though guys so i've got the two major cables running up the back there they're nice and straight you really want to make sure that coax cable on the back for the aerial stays nice and straight the whole way along whenever you're routing this unit you don't want to put any kinks or bends in it as best as you can it will affect the quality of the signal so i'm going to be doing something a little bit tricky with this guys i'm going to use the extended cable that gme supply this one right here and the connector that they supply and i'm going to feed the connector cable up underneath the dash in through this panel i'm going to drill a hole in it if i can i'll have to have a bit of a look and i'm going to put a grommet in there rubber grommet which i can feed this through and it makes it nice and clean so it's not just a plastic cut hole okay so i've got my panel out of the car now i'm daring to be a little bit different with this guys a lot of people will just use like one of those through connectors which go into one of these panel locations the button locations but honestly those button locations are super valuable and i don't want to take them up with the connection like this so i'm going to try something a little different because we have the option to hide this cable and try and make it a little bit neat so basically this is how it sits in the car this panel right here now i'm going to try and feed the cable in from the driver's side down through here underneath drill a hole in here where there's nothing on the other side as you can see right there and i'm going to drill a hole through there and i'm going to put this rubber grommet that one there in the hole that i've drilled and then feed the cable in through that so it should be nice and neat and hidden and that means that the cable can move in and out of it if it needs to as well to stretch a little bit so that's what i'm going to try i can be the guinea pig for this one and if it turns out bad you guys don't have to do it so there's a handheld device there's a cable coming through what we set up before now this is a clip that gme have supplied which basically is just a double end adapter so clip that one in there and here's the cable that i fed up from the unit behind all the console area that clips in the other side and that now joins the two together and it's actually just giving us power so and there we have it so that can move freely in and out of that grommet as well and we'll mount it somewhere about there so let's get all this stuff put back together now i'll neaten up this wiring i've got a bit of it hanging around so i'll just neaten that up quickly put everything back together and then we'll mount up the handheld device to finish things off all right so that has stuck firmly and it is not going anywhere guys pop your device in there and we are good to go and even when i'm driving along if i've got my leg up here or moving my leg around i've got super long legs so that position isn't getting in the way it's not making it uncomfortable for me to drive right now so that's good and the lead is in a really good spot hanging down there it's not getting in the way and even if you wanted to you could tuck it up in there neatly as well alrighty guys so that is the installation now complete we are done and dusted with the install but before i wrap this video up guys i'm just going to quickly run through some of the buttons on your handheld device and what they do the xrs connect units have a ton of features in them and they also have applications you can download onto smart devices and they pack even more features so it's pretty much going to need a whole video which i will do soon i'm going to dedicate a video to running through all of the features on these units for you guys and talk more in depth about it but for now i'm going to quickly run through what you'll be using on your handheld device day in day out so over here we've got the power on button okay so the unit is now on above that we've got the xrs button that takes you through to some extra features of the unit to get out of that you just hit back same with any uh of the menus on this unit you just hit back to get out of them and then you've got your scan button over here that's going to scan through all the channels until it finds some channel that someone's talking in and it'll stop at that okay so if you're trying to find something with some action on it that's how you do it and below that you've got your priority button the priority button basically sets your favorite channel and you can just click that button anytime to go straight to that channel for instance i'm on channel three now not priority i'll hold down on that button and it sets it as priority now you can see the pri next to it and then i can move up to a different channel and then hit priority takes me straight now over here we've got the duplex button now i'm not entirely sure how this button operates a hundred percent because i haven't used it before but i have been doing some research into what duplex is all about basically from what i can read it's a uh it's a repeating button so basically it will help send your signal as far as possible by bouncing off other antennas in higher areas so that's really good if you're in an emergency situation and you need to try and get a signal out as far as you possibly can you need to hit the duplex button on certain channels uh now different units have different duplex channels this unit is 80 channel so i believe that it runs on 1 to 8 and 41 to 48 are its duplex channels but you'll need to double check for your unit guys now below that we've got the squelch button this button basically is going to suppress the noise in the background so if i press it there's noise all the time when someone talks that noise will go away and then it'll come back when they finish talking so if you have the squelch button on that will be there if you turn it off basically it suppresses that background noise and only comes on when someone is sending through a signal and talking okay below that we've got our up and down for our channel button those ones there and then we've got a menu button which has a bunch of features in it guys look at them all uh we'll go we'll go through that in a later video hit back to get out of that for now and then we've got a volume button over here and guys this 2 watt speaker is an animal he's so loud and extremely clear i'll quickly just before i wrap up this video try and see if i can find a channel which someone's talking on with it on its max at 31 it's probably gonna blow our eardrums off okay i'm gonna just get that that is so loud guys even down at eight for instance let's go back to that channel but anyway you get the idea it is really loud and really clear so that two watt speaker kicks butt guys that wraps up the video for the install of the gme xrs outback unit this is the same for all the xrs units you'll be able to use this video to install a bunch of them guys thanks for stopping by as always really appreciate it if you hit that subscribe button it helps me continue making these videos for you guys and if you enjoyed this video don't forget to drop it a thumbs up if you have any questions about the video drop them in the comments section below i will see you guys in the now