We just opened a 501-3C critical communications intuitive for the Colorado Rocky Mountains SAR, and we bought two F150’s and needed a clean two way radio center console solution, and ran into Havis. Enough to house 3 radios. One for our repeaters and specific frequencies, and the other two radios being Boulder County Sheriff’s radio, and Boulder County EMS, with Heli Frequencies, all trunked of course. With an in vehicle repeater which isn’t seen but housed inside the console. BUT! My god! $400 for a center console for a non profit was completely insane so we copied Havis using sourced materials for about $150. It’s just metal with hard plastic covers. We used metal covers. I think Havis, although high quality, and no doubt the best, is raking the taxpayers over the coals. Especially when you consider l the great number of vehicles these have to go into. When craftsman look at these things we have to ask, where’s the money? There’s truly nothing to these things. These are mostly found in municipal and law enforcement vehicles here. So went as far as attending a county auction to get the entire vehicle and ended up buying from private. I was shocked to learn about these. Johnson makes some as well but again, the market appears to be cornered. We’re actually thinking of entering the market with ours to combat the no doubt over inflated price.
Yea they are expensive. If you become a dealer you get special pricing though. On top of that You have to also consider as well, that govt goes to the lowest bidder. So most upfitters take hits sometimes just so they can say THEY were the ones that upfitted such and suchs cars. But yes. You might as well perfect the craft if you have the metal working tools and go for it. 1st in products (a division of 1075 emergency vehicles in northern nj) is doing just that with abs type plastics and is apparently doing it with much success. We use havis because their national HQ is 35 minutes away from us. But if the budget is tight we will do what other upfitters in south Jersey do and go to 1075. I say go for it. Our company is trying to do the same thing. Drive the cost of everything back down. Safety shouldn’t be outside everyone’s financial reach. Hell new Motorola uhf radios are anywhere from 5-10 thousand dollars. It’s nuts.
Depends where you are going to mount it. Your best bet is to order it through a 3rd party supplier like strobesnmore.com and have them give you just blank filler plates to box it off. You still need a bracket to bolt it down. If it's going in something like a crown Victoria or older dodge charger for example you will at least need to buy an old console off eBay and remove the vehicle specific brackets from it. That or bend and form your own. We managed to get havis to give us the original prints for the vehicle this went into and we made them up ourselves using the prints. 👍
