Electric antenna wiring & trouble shooting ...

- Z
- Zon
  
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posted
20 years ago

Fri, Jan 2, 2004 8:11 PM

I have some trouble with electric antenna, it does not work so to speak. I opened it up, and noticed that there actually quite a few things that may malfunction. What does typically break in electric antenna? I'm talking about '99 9-3.

I noticed there are two wires coming to antenna unit: one of them seems to provide +12V regardless of ignition position, purpose of the another one is unknown. Is it ground, or some kind of signaling? If latter one, how is antenna grounded?

These two wires seem to connect to black box in antenna unit, which has three wires going to actual antenna motor module. What are these three wires? I'm guessing they are +12V and two grounds, which are active depending on the desired travelling direction. Is that right? What is the purpose of this black module? It is approx. size of one cubic inch.

How does antenna know/decide when to go up and when to go down?

Please, help me out. I really would love to know how it is supposed to work so that I could try to locate&fix it.

BR, Zon

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- Walt Kienzle
  
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posted
20 years ago

Fri, Jan 2, 2004 8:35 PM

My experience is not with anything as new as your model, but the ground connection is typically through the body of the car; therefore a separate wire isn't needed. As you have found, one wire supplies 12V all the time to allow the motor to move the antenna up and down. The second wire likely supplies 12V when the radio is on to signal that the antenna should go to the raised position. When the radio is off, there is no voltage present on that line, signaling the antenna to be lowered.

BTW, my aftermarket Blaupunkt radio also follows this convention (as do all aftermarket radios that I have seen), so my power antenna still works correctly. I have seen replacement power antennas for about $30. Unless the problem is a bad fuse or broken wire, it may save much grief to just install a replacement instead of spending time trying to effect a repair.

I hope this helps.

Walt Kienzle

1991 9000T

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- Zon
  
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posted
20 years ago

Fri, Jan 2, 2004 9:23 PM

Thanks. This helps for sure! I will check two incoming wires again, and if they seem to work like you described, I will get replacement.

BR, Z

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- Robert Brown
  
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posted
20 years ago

Sun, Jan 4, 2004 10:17 AM

My bet is that your problem is mechanical and not electrical. Open the housing to see if the cord is broken, before playing with the electrics.

We had a problem with our antenna in our 1999 9-3. Turned out that the plastic toothed cord that drives the antenna up and down had broken. This is apparently very common and we found a couple of sites that gave good instructions on how to put in a new one (which cost about EUR 30). Try

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do I replace my broken AntennaMast?

to see how to feed in the new cord and antenna. The writer assumes a broken antenna rather than a broken cord, but the instruction on how to feed the new cord is still relevant.

If the cord is broken, the broken section must be removed from the housing and the antenna assembly (minus antenna shaft and cord) must be reinstalled and connected (including grounding) before the new antenna and cord are fed in.

Tell us how it goes.

/Robert