Where's the Grease Monkey when you need one?

Where I live, there has been very little vandalism in the area over the past 13 years. So it was a surprise to discover some mindless idiot had decided to break off the aerial on my car right at the base. I now cannot receive any radio signals until I do something about it!

It is many years since I had to replace a car aerial. and I know it is never an easy task to do, as the wiring is always a sod to get connected from the aerial to the radio. As my years advance, I find the thought of contorting myself into the inaccessible places within bodywork is distinctly unappealing.


Now I could probably cheat and find an old wire coat hanger and shove it into the remains of the present aerial. Or I could pay someone else to do all the work. For some reason, I decided to attempt the task myself! Big mistake, HUGE mistake!!!!


First, I had to take the old aerial out. I had to remove the plastic wheel arch cover over the front wheel to gain access to where the aerial was attached to the bodywork. I discovered that where the plastic was attached, the metal had all corroded, and I got a massive shower of rusty wheel arch all over me as I tried to remove the plastic! Now there is no way I can re-attach the plastic to the wheel arch again, unless I go and get new metal welded back on again!


Oh well, now I have got this far, I might as well continue and worry about putting everything back together again later. Inside the car, I managed to get to all the wiring behind the dashboard, and located the aerial wire. The next thing I did was attach a piece of string to the wire securely and then went back to front of the car and successfully pulled the wire with the string attached all the way out, and removed the old aerial completely. Phew, half way there!

After all the trouble of getting the old aerial out, I though I might as well make it worth my while and replace the old aerial with a new "motorised" version. "No one will be able to break this off" I said to myself. When I purchased the new aerial, I discovered that I had a new set of problems to overcome!

When I got the aerial out of the box, it had about 1.3 metres of aerial cable attached. It also had 3 wires for the electrical operation. These wires were approximately 6 inches (15cm) long. How I am expected to connect these wires to the radio, live and negative points, in the car, is something I couldn't work out. Now I have to rummage around the garage to find some extra lengths of wire to extend the wiring so that I can connect the aerial to the correct parts of the car.

Putting everything back again, has definitely been a challenge for me. The weather hasn't been of much help either. Every time I go out to the car, somebody turns the tap on and I get a soaking! For some reason electricity and water do not mix! So my attempts at finishing this task is now dragging on over a number of days.

Having managed to add extension wires to the original ones at the aerial, I then start rummaging around inside the car to find the correct wires to attach my new leads to. At first it was quite easy as I had plenty of space to get to the wires under the steering column. It was when I needed to connect a wire to the radio that I came across a major obstacle.

There simply was no room to feed a wire through behind the dash board to anywhere close to the radio. So I had to remove the centre console to be able to get to the wiring behind the radio. Only after removing enumerable plastic bits, and dozens of screws, was I able to peer into the dark depths inside. (I am now distinctly worried! I didn't realise that the car had been secretly trying to build its own version of "Short Circuit"!)

I managed to connect all the wires to the correct places. I was even smart enough to test that the aerial actually goes up and down when I switch the radio on, before I started to put everything back together! So after about 5 days, I now have a fully functioning motorised car aerial, a rusty wheel arch that has suddenly become more religious than I will ever be, and a mixed sense of accomplishment, tempered with chagrin that I have caused more damage to the car than the vandal originally did!