The best thing you can do is take 18ft of the feeder co-ax and wind a coil out of it and place that as near to the feedpoint as you can.

Have a look on the DX Engineering website. They have an in depth manual for the Hustler BTV antennas.

Why not just buy a Kenwood TS480HX which is a 200W HF+6 mobile transceiver?

I think this is what disappointed me the most with the Icom 7000. I bought it after I'd bought my TS590 which has very sharp skirts with the IF DSP and was expecting something similar with the Icom 7000. I found that the nearby strong signal handling wasn't much better than the TS480 and in hindsight, I'd have been better off buying a 1.8kHz SSB filter than the Icom 7000.

The NB on the Icom 7000 though is a thing of wonder and I can't believe the way it deals with a QRM source I have locally. It certainly makes the 80m band usable for me which the TS590 doesn't.

Ah, CW. Sorry, I'm not up to speed with this new fangled communications mode so I can't comment on that aspect. I'm just a phone with a smattering of data from time to time.

Ah but thats in one of those mickey mouse cars you Americans seem intent on driving in the vain hope of achieving the same fuel efficiency we've had for decades with our diesel cars, lol 

In the UK, the 480 comes with the mobile bracket, the mobile cable, the extended power cable as standard. You have to pay £120 for the TXCO and £80 for the VGS module so it adds £200 to the TS480 making it around £950 for the SAT and £1050 for the HX.

However in the UK, the Icom 7000 does not come with a mobile mounting kit, face off cable or extended power cable and it will cost you approximately £110 for those taking the Icom 7000 up to just over £1300, over £350 more than the 100W TS480 which is enough money to buy a TM-V71 dedicated dual band FM transceiver.

It is a tough choice for us over here and if the prices you state for the US are correct, I can fully understand why you would push a 7000 over a 480 as whilst I personally feel and have observed the 480's HF performance to be better, it isn't $400 better.

I've done this and I can. I can take a medium strength SSB signal on the TS480 - say a S5 or S7 and on the Icom 7000 it has a lower S meter reading, maybe S1 or S3, but more importantly, it has the sound of a weaker signal - more of a hiss to it. Pop on the pre-amp and it is as strong as the TS480 is without the pre-amp on.

So the noise. When I get out of town, thanks to the excellent installation information on your website (my long standing disagreement with powering from lighter sockets aside   ) and partly down to the fact it is a very sparsely populated rural county, in the daytime I usually have S0 noise reading on every single band and even when engaging the pre-amp on 17-10m both static and whilst driving down the road. With an install like this, the difference between the TS480 and the Icom 7000 on weak signals (S1 to S3 on the 480) is quite notable. The Icom 7000 won't even hear them with the pre-amp off however will pull them in slightly better than the 480 when the 7000s pre-amp is engaged but then I've still got a pre-amp I've yet to use on the 480. It IS deaf compared to the TS480 and also my TS590 when I tried it side by side prior to /M installation but that is mitigated by just running with the pre-amp on however I'll add the caveat that if you've any noise on the S meter, you want to be dialling down the RX gain anyway to improve the S/N ratio.

But despite this and despite my intentions to take the 7000 out of the car and put the 480 back in for the last several weekends, the 7000 is still there and I am not rushing to do it which has surprised me.

I have an older one which is basically stock. It is mounted in the trunk of my car on one side on its side with nothing within 3" of the front, back or sides and nothing over the lid. On a 25C sunny day it operated in RX mode for 4hrs constantly (fan only comes on in TX) and the temperature gauge only got to half way. I've operated it on 32C days for a couple of hours and its not got above 1/3.

My TS480 ran a lot cooler but then again, it is a lot bigger with larger heatsinks however in my opinion, the overheating issue of the Icom 7000 is usually self inflicted by the owners stupid decisions on installation locations. I've seen photos of them installed in center console storage cupboards barely bigger than the radio. Where is the heat supposed to go? This idiot puts his radio in the small tray that goes under the seat!!!

http://www.w5nig.com/blogpics/coax/rig1.jpg

Why not just build two standard halfwave dipoles, one for 80m and one for 40m and connect them to the same feedpoint? End result is you have two resonant antennas with virtually 50 Ohm impedance and minimal feedline losses requiring no magical feedline length that can be built for the cost of the wire, something to make up a dipole center, some spreaders and end insulators.

Why are you using a S meter to give a report? That is what the CB fraternity do. S meters are a GUIDE unless you have a known calibrated one calibrated to the Collins standard. And that brings me onto another point. Kenwoods are calibrated in line with the Collins standard which means a more stingy S meter than Icom and Yaesu who recognised a long time ago that the stupid hams think a S meter giving a higher reading for a given signal means it has a better receiver.

In my opinion, the 480 is better for HF and as a beginner radio. I swapped a TS480 for an Icom 7000. I found it deaf on HF compared to the TS480, the TX audio isn't as good, the TS480 is easier to use (no menu diving to change commonly used things such as power, mic gain, agc) and you can see the screen even with the sun shining directly onto it - the Icom 7000 screen becomes hard to read when its bright out, even though the head unit is in a car shaded from the sun. The AGC is also damned annoying on the Icom 7000 - I get like an electrical "tick" that will ping the AGC and then have a slow delay even on medium setting and I have to put the NB on to eliminate it but with the TS480 it is non-existent. The TS480 will also put out more power on 12V when you've turned the engine off - the Icom 7000 drops to 50W and requires the car running or an additional purchase of a battery voltage booster to maintain 100W with the engine off. Oh and if you want to have the head unit seperate from the body, Icom will charge you £70 for the privilege in the UK.

The Icom 7000 is probably the best of the "mobile shack in a box" radios but for HF only the TS480 wins hands down.

If HF is your main interest, the TS480 is best but benefits from SSB and/or CW filter being added. Really easy to use while mobile with a clear display and everything you need on buttons on the front panel. A Kenwood TM-V71 makes a nice FM dualband companion.
If you want an all in one, the Icom 7000 is a nice rig but is a bit deaf on HF compared to the TS480 and not as easy to use although nowhere near as horrific as the Yaesu FT857.

Yeah because the fact I can do it every day of the week, every week of the year is quite irrelevant apparently as is the fact that I couldn't when I used the stock whip.

It has everything to do with BOTH. Neither is sufficient on its own. Sometimes when you post drivel like that, similar to your "every cars stock wiring without exception is insufficient to power a HF transceiver" rubbish I wonder if you've been on the moonshine when you posted it.