I just installed new antenna and mount on the headache rack of my truck. I stripped the paint and everything to get a good ground and it seems to work great. Now here's the problem, the negative wire on the radio isn't hooked up to anything its just laying on the carpet. My guess is that its grounding through the coax, is this bad?

 

From my understanding the coax shielding s/b grounded as well as the neg from the radio. I wouldn't say it's bad but w/out the ground you may have more static or noise.

 

Your bad. Ground it. Probably didn't hurt anything, but it isn't the right way to get power to the unit.

The main downer would be accelerated corrosion at the antenna ground because of DC current flowing through it.

 

Thanks guys, I got it fixed. I didn't think having it ground through the antenna was right but I'm new to cb's so I wasn't sure.