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If your antenna experiences an erection lasting more than four hours...

R

rollinstylee

Hard-core CEG'er
Joined
Mar 30, 2007
Messages
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Location
Dublin, OH
...is there any cause for concern? We had a bad ice storm last night and I had to drive through freezing rain (would never have left my apt. if I knew how bad it was), and when I got back, my antenna was frozen solid and wouldn't budge. I assume the motor has a breakdown switch so it doesn't burn out the windings trying to put it down?
 
rollinstylee said:
...is there any cause for concern? We had a bad ice storm last night and I had to drive through freezing rain (would never have left my apt. if I knew how bad it was), and when I got back, my antenna was frozen solid and wouldn't budge. I assume the motor has a breakdown switch so it doesn't burn out the windings trying to put it down?
Click to expand...

I haven't had this happen with the Contour, but my Town Car had an automatic shut off so that it didn't run ad nauseam if something happened to the antenna. In my specific situation, the mast snapped off about midway up, and the cord just pushed the top half of the antenna right out the top. The cord came with it, leaving just the bottom of the mast. After startup, the antenna motor would run for about 30 seconds or so, then shut up. So your situation should be no big deal. You can get a quality replacement for short money here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Powe...006QQitemZ160208268591QQrdZ1QQsspagenameZWDVW
 
In my Mystique, I tapped into the blue wire coming off of my head unit and install a switch so I could put the antenna up and down at will, it came in handy since i rarely listened to the radio, I could just leave the antenna down.
 
After-market head unit

After-market head unit

PurpleMystique said:
In my Mystique, I tapped into the blue wire coming off of my head unit and install a switch so I could put the antenna up and down at will, it came in handy since i rarely listened to the radio, I could just leave the antenna down.
Click to expand...

Since installing an after-market head unit I have been having antenna issues too and a up-down switch sounds like a great idea. With an iPod, which currently has about a month's worth of audio, and the death of 96ROCK, I haven't been a big radio fan. So the antenna is usually down but I do listen to talk radio and it would be nice to do that without a manual pull.

Could PurpleM or someone else out there give a little more detail on how this is done or through a link?
 
It's actually pretty simple. Just pick up a push button on/off switch at RadioShack. Pull out your radio and look at the harness. The standard antenna lead color is blue, but you can check your head unit's manual to be sure. All you have to do is cut the blue wire and attach the switch in there, then mount the switch wherever you'd like.

Since my Mystique was a '96, I had a second DIN slot below the radio, so what I did was run some standard two-wire speaker wire from the open DIN slot to the harness. I cut the blue wire and hooked up one of the speaker wires to each end of the newly cut blue wire, then hooked the other ends of the speaker wire to a switch.

Here's a diagram in all of its MSPaint glory.

antennadiagramzm4.jpg
 
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