I installed a new power antenna on my 81. Bought it from Zip. It's the original equipment replacement. Got everything hooked up and it does not go up! The motor gets warm, but nothing happens.

Any ideas?

 

V I A G R A

 

Double check the wireing. Should have a ground, constant power and a trip wire that is powered to make it go up. When the trip wire is removed from power the antenna will go down.

 

What do you mean by a trip wire? There are 3 wires coming out of it, which plugs inside the car behind the speaker. I'll double check the ground.

Thanks

 

Oh, never tried viagra, but if can get this antenna up, I'm willing to try!

 

1 of the wires is controlled by the radio, when you turn it on, that wire will be hot. do you hear a click or anything comming from that area? With the key on and the radio on, you should have voltage on 2 of the wires and ground on the 3rd.

 

If this is a factory style replacement antenna the wiring is a little more than a ground, hot, and a trip wire. Does it have a gray, white and green wire going to the factory style connector?
There's different combinations of two wires to make it go up and down, that's the function of the antenna relay under the center arm rest.
I'd suggest you remove it and bench test it.
UP...
gray- green+

DOWN....
white+ green-

The orange wire under the arm rest is constant hot. That's how the antenna can go down when the key is turned off.
The yellow wire is switched power. When the radio is turned on it goes up, turn it off, down.

Are you replacing a FACTORY antenna or something else that someone may have previously installed? Maybe all the wiring under the arm rest isn't there.

 

Yes I am replacing a factory correct power antenna with the wiring as mentioned. I will check under the armrest to see if I have connection. It is not factory radio though. Would that make any difference?

 

If there's an antenna power wire coming out of the aftermarket radio that woud take the place of the factory yellow wire. It would probably be connected to that yellow wire under the console going to the relay.

On a factory radio the power wire for the radio is yellow. It goes into the radio and is switched inside the radio and comes back out going to the antenna relay.

 

For what it's worth:

I purchased a stock replacement from Eckler's for my '80 and had the same problem. It turned out that the replacement had a built-in relay that was causing issues with the original relay.

I bypassed the original relay (replaced the first replacement antenna because it fried with the double relay) and it works perfect.

Good luck.

 

Thanks for all the help and suggestions. Looks like I'm taking a few things apart today. Luckily it's going to sunny and almost 60 today in Bend.

Tony

 

The switched wire for the antenna on most aftermarket radios is the blue wire. As stated, be sure the replacement antenna you have does not have the relay built in, or if it does, you'll have to do some wiring to bypass the console relay.

 

It has gray, white and green wires and plug directly into the factory harness behind the left speaker. It's properly grounded, but still nothing. Should I pull the aftermarket radio out? I've checked all the wiring all the way to the radio.

Tony

 

strange that I was tackling the same thing today

Now I have alot of things disconnected inside (clusters, switches, etc). Prior to finishing the carpet I wanted to be sure all the wiring was right and to get the antenna to work.

connected new head unit as required, except my orange wire is not hot. I reattached the cluster connector in to the circuit board and still nothing. Ended up running right from the fuse box for testing.

I guess the orange wire has a need for everything to be hooked up. I then looked in the storage where the yellow, orange and black wires go and saw the 3 wires that go to the antenna. Using a multimeter I realized that I was never going to get two hot wires out of the 3.

I am just going to ignore those wires and run my own to the antenna.

sigh

 

30 minutes ago I made a long test wire that was hot (plugged in to fuse box) and touched it to the red and green wires on my antenna. This was to isolate that my issue is in the original wires.

could you do the same to test it?

 

Gonna have to wait till next weekend. I decided to clean, wash and wax it instead. It hit 64 here in Bend today. I'll have to take the front seat out and check all the connections. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll try it this coming weekend.

 

If everything else is factory, and the orange wire to the relay in the console is hot, the antenna power wire (usually blue) from the aftermarket radio should connect to the yellow wire in the harness. If the replacement antenna has a relay in it, you need to bypass the one in the console. But it sounds like you have the correct replacement antenna and just don't have the antenna switched wire from the radio connected correctly. Double check what you have plugged into the wiring harness on the yellow wire.

 

That was just too good.

 

Found the blue wire out of the radio and it's not connected to anything. The prior post says to attach the yellow wire to it out of the harness. There is no yellow wire not connected to something. There is an orange one. The picture may not be clear enough to see.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Tony

 

I can't see the picture, but the blue wire out of the radio is the one that tells the antenna to go up and down. It connects to the wire in the antenna relay under the center console. One wire (usually orange) is hot all the time. I thought that on mine the wire that was from the switched 12v from the blue wire was yellow, but the car is covered and the all together so I can't look. I can't find the diagram of the relay circuit to tell you the colors. One of the wires going from the original radio connector feeds the relay to activate it. Can you get a larger picture of the relay from the passenger side that's near the rear of the center console cover. The green and gray wires going back to the antenna also connect to that relay, what color is the other wire connected to the relay?