I have a question about the power antenna. I bought a replacement shaft (mine was bent and it wasn't going up or down.) The instructions said to pull it out all the way and compare the old with the new length of the toothed part of the cable and see if they're the same, and DO NOT CUT the new one to make it fit.

However, in Googling around, I have seen stories of people who have a small piece of the old cable still in there, and they appear to not have any problems in just inserting the new shaft.. so why not?

Anyone have any luck just inserting the replacement into the fender and having it work, despite the warnings against it?

 

If your antenna mast doesnt work, its etiher b/c it got bent or that the plastic teeth wore out and broke inside the gears. If the length of your new antenna mast teeth is shorter than the new one, you gotta open up your fender flare and remove the motor mount.

http://www.4runners.org/articles/whip

Then you'll need to dig out the teeth.

Sound like a pain? thats why I went w/ the fixed whip antenna. No future worries b/c there are no moving parts.

Bob

 

i just replaced mine with the one that you're talking about. mine was bent and broke, so it just fell out one day. the plastic was the exact same legnth so i didn't have to worry about it, so i just fed right in and it worked perfectly fine. its all shiney and stuff now!

 

I did mine a week ago. I fed in the new mast and the antennae only went down about half way. So it took a couple of fender liner bolts and one bolt for the motor and it came out like butter. Open up the case and I found 2 pieces of old mast in there. New mast works great and it all took only 20 minutes.

BTW - you can try - point the teeth to the back of the truck and turn off the radio to feed in the new mast. If it doesn't go all the way in then turn on the radio and when the antennae is all the way up pull the mast back out - its pretty tight so don't break anything. Before you install your new mast you might as well open up the motor and take the old pieces out.

 

I had about 6" left in there. Rolled the dice, held my breath and turned on the radio and fed it in.

Voila. Works like a champ.

If it screws up again, I'll do the whip thing.