Antenna mast/cord replacement

Not sure if this thread is meant to be here or not. If not, feel free to move.


Hi all,

There is little info that I could find on replacing the electric antenna mast on GQ Patrol/Maverick so I thought I would write my experience. Both the white-toothed cord (inside the mast) and the antenna mast were broken on mine.

According to some (on other forums and in a couple of Nissan auto part shops), it is as simple as unscrewing the locking nut, removing the black body seal, pushing the dash antenna button up, whilst pulling on the antenna mast to remove it. To put the new part in you pushed the white cord in and pressed the dash antenna button down. This way you don't have to pull everything apart.

Hmmm... Unless I am mistaken, I think people are telling porky pies… or maybe our scenario was just different.

In all honesty, it would have been easier pulling it all apart from the start. For the life of us, we could not pull the god dam thing out and spent the best part of 40mins trying to do so, almost by brute force at one stage. It was a lot quicker in the end simply pulling it all apart and putting it back together

So, here is my description of how we replaced the antenna mast.

Apologies for not taking pics etc but after 8-9 hours of fidgety work, a tutorial was the last thing on my mind. I will have to do the best with what I have.

This is a guide of our experience in fixing my antenna problem. It is not to be taken as gospel as it may not suit your car/antenna setup nor maybe the correct way either… its simply what we did.

pics for the description are below...



What we needed

• 2 people (2nd to press dash button up and down)
• New antenna/cord kit
• An antenna motor that actually works - otherwise don't bother
• Bent Circlip Pliers or good grippy standard pliers
• Soft cloth or old towel (damage control if using standard pliers)
• Small Phillips head screwdriver
• Patience
• Approx 30mins

How we went about it…


Part A - Exterior of the body

• Remove the wheel to make it easier to access, however probably not a necessity.
  
• Push the aerial mast down so that there is only about an 5-10cm showing (this helped getting the unit out and away from the body)
  
• At the base of the mast, there is a silver locking nut that sits on top of the black body seal. We could have either:
  a) used bent Circlip Pliers to undo the silver locking nut and remove… or
  b) wrap the silver locking nut with the cloth and use standard pliers to undo the locking nut (this is the option we used)
  Mental note to self… DO NOT try and use a screw driver to knock it loose, it wont work and you'll scratch the paint work
  
• Remove the black body seal by gently wriggling it upwards

Part B - Under the body

• Remove the inner guard. We only removed half of it away, which gave us more than enough room to work
  
• Remove the screw that holds the brace joining the car body, to the antenna motor
  
• Unplug the power clip to the indicator light
  
• Unplug the power clip to the antenna motor
  
• There is a lead from the motor to the aerial button on the dash, we left this intact. (A)
  
• Gently maneuvered the motor/mast out of guard so that the mast is facing outwards and most of the motor is out of the guard.
  
• Re-plugged the power to the antenna motor

Part C – Replacing the Antenna mast/cord

• At the bottom of the mast housing (B) where it joins the cord housing (C), we removed the small screw (D)
  
• Pulled the mast housing out and away from the cord housing. We had to break the seal that joined the two sections… not sure if we were meant to seal it back up or not… so we didnt
  
• Once the two housings are apart, we pushed the old antenna mast down so it pops out of the mast housing
  
• Push the antenna button on the dash to ‘up’ so that the motor pushes out any of the remaining white-toothed cord
• NB - our cord did not come out by doing this way, so we had to open the cord housing to extract it - 4 or 5 screws (E)
  
• We put the new antenna mast back into the mast housing and pulled it through. Again leaving 5-10cm to be able to get it back through the body of the car easily enough
  
• Gently placed the white-toothed cord into the cord housing until it stopped – no further
  
• In short bursts, press the dash antenna button down so that it takes the white toothed cord easily. It took a couple of goes to get it right.
  
• When pretty much all of the cord was in, we replaced the mast housing to the cord housing and put the screw back in to hold it.
  
• We then pretty much followed the reverse process of ‘Part B’ then ‘Part A’ to put it all back together. Voila!! An electric antenna that works.

I hope that this helps someone that is about to go through the same pain as we did yesterday.

Cheers, Dave

A little bit off topic, but I’ve got this and have it ready to install.

http://www.pefabrication.com.au/prod...cat=249&page=1

http://i1015.photobucket.com/albums/...0phone/013.jpg

http://i1015.photobucket.com/albums/...0phone/016.jpg

http://i1015.photobucket.com/albums/...0phone/015.jpg

Rossco

Good post Ducer.

Thanks for your contribution mate, shame you did not get pics but I know where your head would have been at lol.

I have deleted to 2 duplicate posts to clean your thread up a little for you.

Cheers MR

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MudRunnerTD

shame you did not get pics but I know where your head would have been at lol.

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hahaha... yeeeah... felt like up my a** for the first 40mins or so ;)

I'll try to get some on the next little difficult task I try to undertake.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ducer

snip...

According to some (on other forums and in a couple of Nissan auto part shops), it is as simple as unscrewing the locking nut, removing the black body seal, pushing the dash antenna button up, whilst pulling on the antenna mast to remove it. To put the new part in you pushed the white cord in and pressed the dash antenna button down. This way you don't have to pull everything apart.

Hmmm... Unless I am mistaken, I think people are telling porky pies… or maybe our scenario was just different.

[/I]

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No porky's at all, Cobber...

I would have replaced somewhere between 10 and 20 masts now using that method. Takes all of 2 minutes start to finish.

Your situation was different because you had to get the broken tail out which is quite unusual.

Kudo's on the write up and agree it isn't much fun at all getting the whole assy out when you have too.

Sorry to bump...

Hmmm... Interesting.

Since I have done it once now, my mate who's been helping with my car wants me to do the antenna on his car. I think I'll get around to it this weekend.

So, I'll give it another go by pulling on the mast etc. if that doesn't work and I have to pull the whole thing out again, I'll take pics and post this time. At least I know what I am doing this time :clapping:

Cheers, Dave

This is the next thing I need to do for my Patrol..... The instruction looks complicated.... I hope I don't stuff it up....

Sorry haven't been on forums in a while, 4 kids will do this to you ;)

Heya Agwang,

In all honesty, it's not that difficult, my instructions are probably a little detailed but vey quick when you do each step.

I think the hardest bit was that we had to figure it out on our own which drove us nuts. Hopefully you can simply pull it out and feed the new one back in.

If you have any issues, post here. I'm still getting notifications to some of the threads that I'm in so I should get back to you quickly enough.

Cheers, Dave

Ps- maybe print it out with the pics. Maybe easier.

Awesome. Thanks save. Let's see how I go

Thanks for this. Used it as a good guide today when changing a snapped mast from last owner on a Safari SWB!

Welcome mate, glad it was a help :)

Mine broke recently but Im just replacing it with a am/fm CB style antenna