Power Antenna (?) Running Constantly

[FrankieRider2]

Believe it or not, yes, I am still here. LOL

My wife woke me up this morning telling me "something's going on with the red car out in the garage. You better go check it...." So I go out and immediately hear what sounds like the power antenna running continually, even though there were not even keys in the car. For a stopgap measure, I just unhooked the battery....

Anybody ever experience this? I'm figuring antenna relay, but I don't know. Ideas or experiences are welcome, thank you.

[DynoDave]

You'll probably find that the nylon cable that is part of the power antennae assembly has failed. It's a 20-30 year old piece of plastic. Not an uncommon failure.

A motor turns a drum. The nylon cable is attached to that drum on one end, and to the tip of the antennae on the other. As the motor runs out, it pushes that cable up, and extend the antennae. When fully extended, the torque on the motor increases, and it shuts off. Same with pulling the mast down...motor runs in the opposite direction, and shuts off at the bottom of it's travel.

When the nylon cable fails, there is never any torque against the motor (no end of travel), and the motor never shuts off (until it drains your battery).

If the mast is not damaged, the cable can be replaced. You can try to find a NOS or good used assembly, or a service replacement cable, but they are all 20+ years old, and will eventually fail again.

The better (IMO) fix is to replace the nylon cable with plastic coated steel. Several members at TGO have done this for themselves.

When mine failed, I elected to have a gentlemen who rebuilds them with plastic coated cable take care of this for me. Now, I myself allowed this small repair to snowball out of control, and am not quite done with it yet. But don't let my foolishness scare you off. It's a weekend job. But you can see my antics on TGO here. Antennae repair starts at post #124.

http://www.thirdgen.org/forums/membe...ew-1988-t.html

The AACA member who rebuilt mine was:

Barnet Eaton
512-869-5114

A very nice man. Very reasonably priced repair.

[Roadrunner]

Same thing happened to mine.
My wife drove it and when she got home she called me to tell it was making noise parked in the driveway. It was a couple hours til I could get home to unplug it.
The antenna in my old 92 Bonneville had a an extra little part on the gear that would only allow the drum to rotate a certain number of times before shutting it off in case cable breaks.
I haven't had my 4th gen apart but I'm guessing it may be the same as the Bonneville.
I had been thinking along the lines of retrofitting this feature.

[DynoDave]

Originally Posted by Roadrunner

The antenna in my old 92 Bonneville had a an extra little part on the gear that would only allow the drum to rotate a certain number of times before shutting it off in case cable breaks.

Hmmm...sounds like a nice feature to have. I guess GM may have learned a lesson over time.