95 Explorer EB Ed. ANTENNA won't go up or down--HELP!

[ngreer]

Okay...been watching this forum and using a lot of the info for working on my 95 EB edition Explorer and I gotta say--you guys know what you're talking about.

Anyways--on to my question. I had the radio replaced in my Explorer (the old factory one just literally blew smoke one day and that was that). Since then, the antenna has not moved an inch--it's stuck in the "up" position. Before then, it only moved occasionally at best. I'm wondering what could be wrong and how I can fix this. I am wanting to be able to make it go down when I need to so I can go through car washes and so the kids in the neighborhood won't play with it when it's in the driveway. Every time I turn the truck off I can hear something that sounds like the antenna motor trying to retract it, but nothing happens. Is there any way I could put the antenna motor on a switch of sorts so I can make it retract as I need it to do so? I'm know that turning the new radio on or off does not make the motor "kick in" on the antenna side of the vehicle...any ideas!?

Nick Greer

 

[TheJackal]

Antenna

Are you saying the antenna only worked occasionally with the old radio? or all the time?

I beleive on the Explorers the antenna goes down when the radio is turned off and goes up when it is turned on. Many aftermarket headunits have a control wire for this that gets hooked into the harness if your vehicle has this. Take a look in the install guide for the headunit to make sure you've hooked it up. This wire may be used already to turn an amp on or off.

I'm not sure what it would take to install a switch to it, as I don't have a power antenna on mine. I think it goes up when 12V is present, and goes down when it's not, but I'm not sure. Verify that first before hooking a switch to it.

If the antenna only worked occasionally before, maybe it's the motor. It may just be locked up from not being used often, but if it's making a grinding noise of if it sounds like the motor is turning but the antenna's not moving, it could either be a bad drive gear or a broken mast tape.

My old 89 Crown Victoria had a switch that you'd use to manually raise or lower the antenna to whatever position you wanted it.