Mounting a ham face plate via cassette deck. Questions.

[nnnnnate]

I drive a 2007 LX470 and just picked up a Yaesu FTM-400XDM. For me the perfect place to mount the remote face plate is where the cassette opening is in the dash. I've looked online for some sort of mount and while I've found a few I'm not totally convinced that these will work and be sturdy enough for off road use and what I want them to do. I guess my main question to you guys is if any of you have ideas or experience pulling apart a vehicle cassette deck and whether there is a way to add a rigid mount that pokes out of the opening. I don't really care if the cassette deck become unusable. I just have never opened one up to know what the internals look like.

I guess ideally I could crack it open, gut the internals, and tack weld in some brackets that I could then connect the face plate to.

Do you guys think this is feasible or am I just opening a can of worms that I shouldn't?

Its the perfect spot for this.

 

[Herbie]

If you don't care to use the cassette player, you don't need to dink with it, just remove it. There are always a set of brackets that hold the radios to the "frame" of the dashboard. The brackets will vary depending on year,etc. but you can probably either adapt the existing brackets or make something that has the same hole pattern and mounts to the dash that then gives you a place to hard mount your HAM faceplate.

 

[Maxcustody]

I use a mount from here............top quality.

http://www.lidomounts.com/homepage/id5100mount.html

 

[nnnnnate]

I did some checking and it looks like the unit below the face plate in the picture I posted includes wiring for all of the buttons and knobs around it. Because of this I am not able to simply remove the cassette deck and replace it with a bracket. This was a great idea though. I'm going to try and find some time this weekend to pull apart the dash right there and see if there is another way this can be done while retaining the functionality of the buttons.

Max- I have no interest in a mount that comes up from the floor. The one you linked doesn't get the plate to the height I want it at and those flex arms move around way to much for what I'm going for. I've looked at what lido offers and don't believe that there is anything they have that will work for me.

 

[texascrane]

I've been looking at the ftm-400 and figuring out exactly how I'd mount it is the only thing that's kept me from buying one. I've got an 8800 mounted in front of the ashtray today:

I was thinking about possibly picking up one of these to use for mounting an ftm-400: http://www.proclipusa.com/dashboard...ngled-mount-853162-13020.cmsv?p_leftorright=0

 

[nnnnnate]

That proclip is probably my plan B. The infamous Kurt of Cruiser Outfitters has his Kenwood mounted on one and he told me he is happy with how it's setup. If I remember right he is using a ram ball mount to get things positioned how he wants them.

I'll have to keep this updated with what I can come up with. If I can get my son to go down for a nap I'm going to go out and start ripping my interior apart to sort this out.

 

[nnnnnate]

I'll start with pictures.

Trim pulled.

Bracket that holds the nav, cassette deck, and lower button panel together. This is on both sides.

Cassette Unit removed from stack.

Cassette face plate removed.

Front metal plate removed.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!!!

Why did I just hit the jackpot you ask? The red dots align with four standoffs that the actual tape mechanism was mounted to. Out of this whole assembly the only portion that is the tape deck is removed and is sitting below, the other circuit board that is now exposed controls other stuff. The cassette deck is powered and controlled by the connectors that I've drawn arrows to. Remove the tape deck and everything else ought to function like normal.

I ran it back out to the garage and everything still worked flawlessly. The super bonus is that with those standoffs still in place I don't even need to figure out how to mount a bracket to the chassis, I just make a plate with holes cut to correspond with the standoffs and everything just fits and works. I say that like it'll be easy, and it would be for someone with fab skills. I'll fumble around with it until I get something sorted out it will very likely be ugly. Functional, but ugly.

 

[nnnnnate]

I found some more time to work on the mount. I initially tried to work something out in TinkerCAD then 3d print it but I have no CAD skills and got frustrated and used scrap metal to make it instead.

Here are a couple pics of the mount after installation.

The base and top pieces are way thicker than they need to be but I had the scrap and just used it. The riser parts are 1/2" square I had as well that I just cut down. The mount was all tacked together with weld so it wouldn't go anywhere. I also clipped out a few of the vent slats in the rear of the enclosure so that I could run the cable for the face plate out the cassette deck and have that wire totally concealed.

Here is all of the work hidden and the face plate mounted more or less in place. It was dark so the picture isn't the greatest but you get the idea.

I had hoped to have the rest of the radio wired up so I could power it on but I didn't get that far with the install. The base is a little bigger than what I want to mount it in the center console in place of the CD changer so I ended up running the wires to the rear passenger side in the smaller cubby I have back there. Now I'll need to run extension cables for the mic and face plate which kind of sucks but shouldn't be too bad since I'm a glorified cable monkey for my day job. I'm meeting a club member Tuesday after work to have him help me with another thing so I'm going to do my best to get the radio operable by then. I'll add pics of the setup all powered up when that happens.