Power antenna problems

[tb3]

For starters, Man how I love replacing power antenna motors! Anybody who needs theirs replaced, I'll drive over to your place and replace it for free I love doing it so much.
I recently bought a 86 t type and the power ant was stuck in the up position and unplugged at the connector by blower motor. I pulled the ant motor, replaced the broken nylon belt that runs it up and down, reinstalled and plugged it in. Everything now works as it should. The only problem is, there is a clicking sound coming from the ant motor about every 10 seconds. It does this with the battery hooked up, no matter if the radio and (or) ignition is on or off. Once again, everything is working as it should. The ant runs up and down when I turn the radio on/off, and when I turn the key on/off with the radio on.
I thought it could be a bad ant relay, so I replaced it with a known good one,... same thing happens. I checked my ground coming from the relay, and that is showing good.
I checked all 3 wires at the connector under the hood. Ground is good, ant lead (on/off) is good (obviusly) since the motor is turning on when it gets signal from radio, the third (power) wire, is showing 12 volts at all times. I thought that seemed odd, (Why would they do that?), but... when I looked at the wire schematic in my factory service manual, its showing that the ant relay is on the cig-clk fuse bus, and is supposed to be "hot" at all times.
Therefore, seems to me everything wiring and relay wise is a-ok, I must have a screwy ant motor. I don't know if its the original, but I do know it is the correct unit. I've replaced these in the past, and the ant rebuild kit I bought for it worked perfectly.
Anybody have any other suggestions before I go buy one of these stupid overated and overpriced power antenna motors?
Is there something on the motor I can check for?
I did not have the motor apart when I changed the nylon belt.
I have no corrosion on any of my connections, and I sprayed them all with contact cleaner upon reassembly.
No, I do not want to convert to a non-power ant mast.
No, I do not want to lay a ant mast under my dash top and eliminate power ant as some have done.
And yes, I will be installing my own on/off ant switch to prolong its life when I'm listening to cd's.
Thanks in advance

 

[Roc87]

Can't really add anything to what you already have. One of the first things I did to mine was to put in a rockerswitch in the ashtray panel to keep the antenna from going up. Most stations are strong enough, that I usually don't even have it up when listening to the radio.

Only thing I can think of for the power being constant power is when you are listening to the radio, and shut off the car, that way it can still lower antenna.

Have you tried disconnecting the remote wire from radio to the antenna relay, to see if it makes a difference? Is it still a stock radio?

 

[83ttypecooled]

Power antenna

Hi,
You can come on over and replace MY antenna mast any day, you name it.The last time I did it,cost me a half a day's time.As far as Your trouble goes,I don't think you have an electrical issue. One wire is hot,always.Another wire is hot with the radio on, and the third one is a ground. A relay operates the whole thing,very simple. There is a switch in the unit itself to shut it off in full up and full down modes. If it's clicking, there is a problem with the shutoff switch INSIDE the antenna assembly itself.I will await your plans to replace MY assembly.

 

[TURBOTWIN2]

When replacing the nylon gear strip, did you open up the case and take out ALL the little broken pieces of the old broken strip? Possibly a small piece or two still in there causing problems. HTH.

 

[tb3]

Fixed. Pulled the ant back out, One of the reverse current rocker contacts was sticking. Poor preventive maintance on my part. I should have went through the whole unit when I had it apart. I used some scotch brite to clean some corrosion off the rotor and stator. Wiped off all contacts really good and sprayed with contact cleaner. Is now working fine.
I really shouldn't have posted on this, I had went throuh a ton of post to see if anybody had same problem, but no luck. I really really didnt want to pull this thing back out. Sorry bout that.
83 typecooled, I'd recomend doing the same when you have it out. It actually wasn't that bad a job. I just like to complain. Several write ups on how to pull the ant. Heres a couple things I can add. nothing new.
I did the whole removal and install with a small 10 mm box end wrench and a 10 mm 12 point 1/4 drive socket. Presoak with wd40 or similiar before starting if your screws are a little rusty. May be kind of hard to presoak them from the inside, but you can get extra long spray straws from the auto strore. Stick through a hole from inside engine compt and just spray away, hell, just soak everthing in there, oil on metal protects it (a good thing). Masking tape on your paint is a widely known trick to prevent scratches, but if you've got really nice paint, I'd recomend doing long strips (2" wide tape) with the adhesive sides stuck together, so you can just run a little edge up the side of the tape so theres less sticky side on your paint. Might help from pulling up any flakes or clear coat, who knows? Double, triple, hell, quadruple layer the tape on the fender jam edge to prevent wearing through it when turning your wrench. Pulling the door to you past its last detent gives you almost a 1/4 inch more clearance for your wrench for the top and bottom bolts inside the jam.
I cleaned all the crud off the plastic gear and lubricated with white lithium grease. I also resealed the upper portion of the two halves like they did from the factory. The only reason I can think of for them doing this is to help give water a out (bottom) in case it did get inside the assembly.
Hope this helps someone.

 

[Jerryl]

Glad you got it fixed.
Pulling the antenna IS a dandy!
You can do mine too , I'll get a case of COLD beer and some 3/4 lb bacon double "lean meat" cheese burgers to boot. Thanks for posting!

 

[turbofabricator]

So what's your trick fo removing the coax connection? THAT is the worst part for me! Not to metion the sratches you end up with on your lower arm trying to get the dang thing in place while the fender is cutting the crap outta your lower arm/wrist!!!

 

[tb3]

Jerryl, you better be glad you live so far away. When it comes to beer, I get downright serious. Heck now that I've got three turbobuicks, I can barely afford malt liquor. The lady at the liquor store sent me a "care package". She was concerned about me cause I hadn't been there in over 2days.

for the coax connection, I used a tiny flat blade screwdriver, by tiny, I mean watch repair tiny, but it has to be pretty durable too. There are 2, maybe 3 (cant remember) little "hooks" in there that are up against a edge to prevent from coming apart. Get a flashlight and push in on one side of the connection, and look down in there real hard, and you might be able to see what I'm talking about. Kind of same principle as most of our electrical connections. When you push it into place, it "hooks" and has to be "unhooked" to release. That spring in there is also obviously working against you too . Do not just pull the thing apart, splicing coax is a pain, running new ant coax is also a pain. Just relax your hands and work at it, you'll get it. Don't get tense or pissed or you'll stab yourself (you'll see what I mean) :wink:

I removed all of the 10 mm bolts in the fender jam and fender well. Some write ups suggest less, why not just take them all out? Their all (inner fender well) easy to get to, and the more you remove, the more slack you get

To get the wires and cable back through the inner fender hole, I used my trusty cheapo mechanical fingers I got in the napa bargain box.
I've got long skinny arms, so that helped in getting the ant assy back into position, but I could've made it easier on myself by using some safetywire to pull it up to the hole, then slide the sleeve nut into place. good luck

 

[getchasum]

I rebuilt mine a few months back and it was doing the samething (w/ the clicking). Only advantage or deleted step I had was I bench tested the antenna prior to the re-install. Glad of that........:biggrin:

 

[turbofabricator]

I tape a piece of electical wire to the pwr ant wires and coax and then remove it from the car pulling the electrical wire with it (be sure to use a long enough piece so one end stays in the engine compartment.) then I tape the new wires and coax back on and then pull them back up when installing the new ant. Kinda like an electrcal snake, used for pulling wires.
Thanks for the tip, I do similar, but wondered if there was an esier way.

 

[tb3]

I rebuilt mine a few months back and it was doing the samething (w/ the clicking). Only advantage or deleted step I had was I bench tested the antenna prior to the re-install. Glad of that........:biggrin:

You where luckyer than me. I also bench tested, but the damn gremlin didn't show up until after I installed.

 

[jmidolo]

Resurecting an old post here:

Car has a new GM unit it in. Worked great when I sold the car 3 yrs ago, I bought the car back this month and is stuck in the UP position. I tested the plug and I did not have constant power at any of the 3 connectos.

Can you give me the pinout/wire colors and what they should be. I want to manually run power and see what I get. I didn't think of this until I had the thing 90% of the way out, the fender is all unbolted already. Seems that the bracket that holds the antenna has come loose, but I don't think that would cause it to not move any longer.

 

[Jerryl]

........ Can you give me the pinout/wire colors and what they should be. ...........

Here you go.

 

[jmidolo]

So, help me out here, this is confusing me. White should be hot all the time?
And to make it go down, I'd run power to the green to make it go down manually?

 

[JST A 6]

So, help me out here, this is confusing me. White should be hot all the time?
And to make it go down, I'd run power to the green to make it go down manually?

I'm pretty good at reading electrical schematics but usually bad at explaining things so bear with me...according to this schematic, the only wire that's hot at all times is the orange wire feeding power to the relay from the fusebox. The relay is shown de-energized and the antenna limit switches are shown with the antenna in the down position. In that state the white wire is hot, dark green is ground, and gray is neither. When you turn the radio on, the coil on the relay becomes energized and the contacts change state, causing the gray wire to become ground, dark green to become hot, and white to be neither. As the antenna goes up the limit switches change state de-energizing the antenna motor. In summary, if everything is working properly none of the wires between the relay and antenna should be hot at all times and none of them are grounded at all times, and dark green can be hot ~or~ ground depending on whether the radio is on or off. Hope this makes things marginally clearer than a mud puddle for you...I'm signing off for tonight but will check back tomorrow to see if you've been enlightened...

 

[jmidolo]

Thanks, that helped. I got the antenna down now and out of the car.

Looking at these pictures, the bracket I have is not for this new style antenna that I have.

 

[getchasum]

Joe or anyone else that know....How do you over come the problem with the bracket in the above picture?

 

[ALVAROG1983]

Fixed. Pulled the ant back out, One of the reverse current rocker contacts was sticking. Poor preventive maintance on my part. I should have went through the whole unit when I had it apart. I used some scotch brite to clean some corrosion off the rotor and stator. Wiped off all contacts really good and sprayed with contact cleaner. Is now working fine.
I really shouldn't have posted on this, I had went throuh a ton of post to see if anybody had same problem, but no luck. I really really didnt want to pull this thing back out. Sorry bout that.
83 typecooled, I'd recomend doing the same when you have it out. It actually wasn't that bad a job. I just like to complain. Several write ups on how to pull the ant. Heres a couple things I can add. nothing new.
I did the whole removal and install with a small 10 mm box end wrench and a 10 mm 12 point 1/4 drive socket. Presoak with wd40 or similiar before starting if your screws are a little rusty. May be kind of hard to presoak them from the inside, but you can get extra long spray straws from the auto strore. Stick through a hole from inside engine compt and just spray away, hell, just soak everthing in there, oil on metal protects it (a good thing). Masking tape on your paint is a widely known trick to prevent scratches, but if you've got really nice paint, I'd recomend doing long strips (2" wide tape) with the adhesive sides stuck together, so you can just run a little edge up the side of the tape so theres less sticky side on your paint. Might help from pulling up any flakes or clear coat, who knows? Double, triple, hell, quadruple layer the tape on the fender jam edge to prevent wearing through it when turning your wrench. Pulling the door to you past its last detent gives you almost a 1/4 inch more clearance for your wrench for the top and bottom bolts inside the jam.
I cleaned all the crud off the plastic gear and lubricated with white lithium grease. I also resealed the upper portion of the two halves like they did from the factory. The only reason I can think of for them doing this is to help give water a out (bottom) in case it did get inside the assembly.
Hope this helps someone.

DID YOU HAVE TO REMOVE THE FENDER.

 

[jmidolo]

Joe or anyone else that know....How do you over come the problem with the bracket in the above picture?

So, I ened up getting a bracket for Gbody parts which is the correct mount for that style antenna. It's a "half-U" shape with a piece that sticks out. When using that alone, you are about 1.5 inches above the stock hole to mount it.

What I then did was took the stock "Z" bent piece of metal mount and bolted that to the other mount I got from Gbody..that put me right exactly where I needed to be with the stock mounting position.

Did not need to remove the fender.

 

[ALVAROG1983]

So, I ened up getting a bracket for Gbody parts which is the correct mount for that style antenna. It's a "half-U" shape with a piece that sticks out. When using that alone, you are about 1.5 inches above the stock hole to mount it.

What I then did was took the stock "Z" bent piece of metal mount and bolted that to the other mount I got from Gbody..that put me right exactly where I needed to be with the stock mounting position.

Did not need to remove the fender.

FROM WHERE DID YOU END UP PULLING THE ANTENNA.