Quick Question? I want to replace my power antennae on my car. It has been providing poor reception. It has already been replaced by the dealer once, and I have found a solution.. I found an antennae made of graphite that is guaranteed to give me a better signal. How do I remove the old power antennae, to install the new one??

Thanks...

 

This reply is several months late, but just in case it might help someone else... I'm commenting on the hard part of replacing the mast on a power antenna. In my case it is off a coupe. It assumes you have removed the antenna and that the motor is fine, that the mast simply does not retract or extend, that something's broken inside. The bit that's broken and needs replacing is a plastic tail that engages in a wheel inside the antenna box.

I'm bothering to write this because of the comment I got from the dealer who sold me the part -- retracting mast with attached white plastic notched curled tail. Whereas the part cost £16, I was told the whole antenna cost over £100. And HERE's THE INTERESTING BIT: I had already opened up the box and removed the broken part of the tail. I chatted with the dealer about how they replaced the tail and they said they just fed it in and switched the motor on; if it didn't work they replaced the whole antenna. 'Hang on! You obviously open the box to remove the broken part of the tail, right?' 'No.' 'Well how on earth can the new part go in???' Well folks, how widespread that practice is, I have no idea. But that was enough to confirm me in my suspicion of all professionals, specialists, people who can just demand your money.

So here goes. You unscrew the two halves of the box, remove the broken tail, pack in some more vaseline and screw back up. Now here's where I went wrong. You have to make sure you have the radio in the correct state of being on or off before connecting up, so that when you wire up and switch the radio and it goes off and tries to pull in the new cord. The first hard part is getting the tail down the chamber and into the wee hole at the bottom. You'll need a long thin screwdriver and patience to manage this. I tried all sorts, like putting an empty ballpen/biro (smash the end to leave you with a hollow tube), but in the end it was just patient trial. Once the tail is in the hole you connect the wiring and switch radio off. The tail got sucked in -- and here is where my description differs from others on the web -- and stuck. Everyone else's experience I've read, that's the end of the story. Well, I had to open it all up again and see why the tail was sticking. I've tried to illustrate this on a photo. You should see a red dotted line which shows instead of curling around the wheel, gets fouled up in a corner. I tried for an hour various things like removing the white gearing to enable me to turn the wheel... no good. Other people have said -- to overcome the initial problem of poking the tail down, down into the hole, to STRAIGHTEN the tail. Yeah, right. I did the following, which MAY be the cause of the final success: I used an emery block to smooth out the end of the tail; I heated it in hot water and using long-nose pliers, curled the tail tighter, using the old one as a pattern. I then screwed the box up tight. Fed the tail in (another 1/2 hr!!) wired up, switched off the radio and SUCCESS -- it sucked the new antenna down.



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