Anyone thought about taking out the stock antenna and putting a power retractable antenna in it's place? I was thinking you could take the motor and antenna off a luxury car that was in a junk yard and use that to make the conversion. Thoughts?

 

my trucks at the dealership now, but on my 03 mustang I bought a power antennea kit from crutchfield for it. I had to have some body work and a repaint in order to get it on. Since I can't see my truck's antennea at the moment, not sure if it would work. But it the antenea mount is small enough it may be an easy upgrade. The mustangs antennea mount was about the size of a silly putty egg container thing.

The basic install on them is just remove the stock antennea and the power antennea goes in it place, and then it comes with a bendable metal bracket that supports it's under the fender. Pretty easy. Just the hole up top is what makes the difference.

 

Yeah it's pretty small, just about the same size as my last car that had a power antenna. I'm just curious how it would hook up to the radio so it knew when to go up and down. Plus, I'm assuming you have to take the fender off to put the motor in there to power the antenna. I would think that would be a beast of a job.

 

I seriously explored this option on my 01 KR but, there wasn't much room in there to work with... I'd assume that the 04+ might have more room... not sure though.

Activating the antenna from the radio would be the challenging part I think.

 

IMO a lot of work with no real reason?

 

To install it, you may be able to get away with just taking off the inner fender. Not sure on that since I haven't done it yet. As far as the radio hook up, the antennea wire would hook up like normal. On the one I had there was three wires. One goes to ground. One went to a 12Volt power source (it had a built on relay). THe third is the trigger wire. If you have an aftermarket radio, it's no big deal, just hook it up to the power antennea wire. For a stock radio you could either just hook it up to the Ignition wire (so it goes up every time the radio is turned on, and down when the ignition is off). BUt I bet if you get a voltmeter and probe some of the wires in the harness off the stock radio, that there is a power antennea wire in there. Just have to figure out which one. As a third option, you could put the trigger wire on a switch. And manual flick the switch to put it up and down. And you could also put this switch on the ignition wire, that way by default- car off makes the antennea go down.

 

I worked custom sterero installs for a couple of years, and the install for this looks easy compared to soe of those. I would try to do some measuring first to get a good fit over the existing holes. Some aftermarket ones get power from antenna lead, but not sure if that only works fro replacment ones or not. Switching may be different when going non-powered to powered.

I switched mine to a shorty flexible antenna instead, didn't want to tear up my new truck.

 

I'm worried about my stock antenna getting torn off because I go in and out of garages all the time and it just slams it. I know an option is a shorter antenna, but if I'm going to replace the antenna I'm going to do it with the way that looks and works the best. I really like the old cars I had that had power antennas.

 

Good point, I actually used my last truck's antenna as a guage for parking garages.....saved my roof more than once. I have heard that the older Ford's power antennas would work, but not too sure about a chrome bezel and atnenna on a newer vehicle.