I'd first like to state that I know NOTHING about antennas or their wiring. So I went in to Car Toys today, skepticle that they would be even remotely helpful. The guy right off the bat was a complete douchebag, and explained that if I paid him like $80 they would kinda fix my antenna. NO thanks.

My 97 4runner antenna mast was MIA when I bought it a few months back, and rather then spend money on something that will just gut busted again on the trail, I bought a short rubber mast instead of the power one. Then my problem was I had no way to attach the mast to the dumb power unit, so I took the power unit out and clipped the little coaxial antenna cable at the very end, but its 3 inchs too short!

SO, my question is: can I get away with using some heavy copper speaker for the extra length or must I use the same type of antenna wire. If the latter is the case, how do I splice them together and properly attatch the wire to the antenna mast???

*EDIT* I educated myself a little bit about the antenna wire so now I know the outside braid is the ground and must be connected to the car, and the inside wire is for the antenna. This info just makes the task of DIY seem a lot more complex than I was hoping for....

 

The short rubber antenna that I bought a while back had a length of coax (with the connectors on) with it. I just routed it in through the same path as the stock wire, and connected it directly to my stereo. Maybe you can look around and just buy a piece of coax with the connectors on it and replace the whole thing. It shouldn't cost much for that.

 

Yeah Im thinking at this point ill just eat the loss of my 8 dollar antenna and buy one with the cable already on it

 

I put a switch in line of the power antenna switch wire (not the actual antenna wire), so that when I am on the trail, I can manually make the antenna go down w/o turning off the head unit.