Help! I broke my power antenna and the car wash and ordered a replacement. Step 1 says to remove the nut the is holding the mast in outside of the car. The nut turns and goes up the bolt it then gets near the top but will not come off. It just keeps turning and turning while it stays in place. Is there a trick to getting this nut to come off so I can remove the old mast?

Thanks!

Hi, my antenna on my 2000 1.9 s40 (usa) turbo broke 2 days after i bought it at an auction - would love to know how you get on with replacing it and if you post detailed descriptions of what you did that would be great as im planning on fixing my soon.

thanks

Hi John, my brother in law who is a mechanic came over and fixed it. To remove the mast you have to take out the whole unit which is held by two nuts inside of the truck. You also hand to carefully wind the new mast cable around the spool which is located inside the motor unit. Its about a 40 minute repair. In my opinion, it does not seem like an easy repair but I am not very mechanically inclined. I was able to get the mast itself off of ebay for about $20.00. Good Luck with it.

Thank you very much for this post! I was able to replace the old antenna mast myself after reading this.

If your antenna snaps off eg in a car wash, you would just need a new mast replaced. You should be capable of doing this with no tools or disassembly required. Have a helper turn on and off the radio up front. This is while you are at the antennae, power up radio and pull old mast out. Feed new mast in while turning radio off and on. Disassembly of motor housing should only be necessary if the plastic geared cable has broken and can not be removed otherwise.

Absolutely untrue.

Although removing the nut and pulling out the old antenna mast cable by turning the radio on (especially when the old mast itself is broken) is an easy thing to do... removing the base of the antenna mast (bottom, broken half) is a whole other story.

My replacement mast seems to have two "pins" on each side that hold the mast in place. Seeing as how the replacement mast is identical to the old mast, I can only assume that these pins are what is keeping me from pulling the lower half of the antenna out of the motor assembly.

Any tips on getting the small half out? Forcing it with a pliers... is not recommended. (oops!)

Hi all,
I am having the exact same problem with getting the hex nut off. I have removed the whole unit and went at it with vice grips and a pair of pliers. I seem to have a some sort of retaining washer/nut that threads OVER the edges of the hex nut. I cannot get either of those suckers to turn and all I have suceeded in doing is scratching the living hell out of both pieces. any thoughts?
thanks!
Chris

this is for a 2003 model but I assume it should be the same.