Yes I searched... all I found were folks who have replaced their masts, or folks you have replaced the power with a whip, or folks who question why one would want to disable the auto up feature. Well sorry, new thread time.

Has anyone installed a switch for the power antenna, so that its action can be manually controlled? I know some of you guys also have 80 series Land Cruisers.. saw that thread. The advantage is you can leave the antenna down, even when listening to the radio (antenna not necessary in the city, depending on station). You can also lower it, and be assured it'll stay lowered even while changing CD's, while wheeling in the trees. You can also choose to not raise it, when your truck's covered with snow & ice. I'll stop there.

Can anyone point me to a tech write-up for how to do this? If not I'll have to figure it out myself I guess... thanks in advance..

 

just guessing here- isnt it that there is a hot wire from the radio to the antenna? cut the wire, install a switch in between and just switch it on when you want to.

 

what he said

 

yup i did this on my 92 runner. just as stated above all you have to do is throw a switch into the hot wire of the antenna. i mounted the switch at the back of the din so it was out of view. i just accessed the wire from the fender at the antenna and ran the wire up through my engine bay and through the firewall. Its about an hours time after all is said and done...although by then I was a master of 2nd gen dash removal.

 

yep did it on my mine.. i use it just as you said, leave it down when wheelin, or in the city. there should be a blue wire coming out of the back of your HU that goes to the antenna, cut it and throw a simple rocker switch inline.

 

excellent, thank you.

 

Got stumped yesterday by the wiring.. anyone have a EWD who can tell me exactly what color the antenna wire is? It's not the dark blue one... I cut that and nothing worked. I dug around a little more here and found this thread: https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f2/how-disable-power-antenna-46111/ but again nothing concrete, other than a suggestion it may be a yellow wire.

So my next step was to look at the wire going to the motor to see if it was yellow, but it was getting dark & cold and I didn't want to start hacking into the fender. I also found the antenna relay.. which complicates this.. seems I need to just bypass that somehow? this was supposed to be so easy.

On the plus side, the antenna switch from a 97 Land Cruiser fits great in the center console..

 

Nakman, post pics when you're done on the switch you're talking about. I've never thought of doing what you suggest but it sounds good since I spend most of my time in the city and rarely use the radio. It is pretty annoying when I switch between Aux or my CD player that sometimes I hit Radio and the damn antenna moves up. Then I switch to CD/Aux and it retracts.

 

On the 1st gen 4Runners, at least, the antenna is operated by a switch, very similar to a power window switch. Push up and and antenna goes up, push down and it goes down. On many aftermarket radios, the power antenna wire is often yellow or orange from what I have seen.

 

Here is a wiring diagram: http://www.installdr.com/Harnesses/Toyota-Wiring.pdf

But I have a problem too. Why does the 87+ diagram have two antenna wires and they want you to connect both of them to the one antenna wire on your aftermarket HU?

 

idk if the wiring of the 3rd gen taco and 4runner are alike, but on my 97, its the dark blue wire somewhere in the front passenger wheel well.

 

I put a switch on my antenna yesterday. Simple single-pole switch, off and the antenna doesn't run, on and it does. I wanted to comment that it is not the yellow wire that you need to cut if you want to put a switch in. Cut the BLUE wire that goes into the relay and splice in a switch. I just left the switch hanging out the back of the dash. I can reach down into the footwell and flip it if need be. I live in the city so I don't anticipate needing it much. I did notice on my way to work that AM reception is pretty poor, and I no longer get FM reception in my parking garage like I used to. All in all I'm happy with it though.