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My noisy antenna
The Maxima has a power antenna in the
passengers side rear quarter panel. It is wired up to the head
unit, so that it extends when the stereo is turned on, and retracts when
the stereo is turned off. After about a week or so of driving the
car, I noticed that the antenna was making quite a bit of noise when it
went down.
I went to the internet, and started searching for
information. Soon, I found a few posts on a Maxima message board
discussing antenna failures in the cold weather. The antenna
consists of a four section antenna mast, a drive motor, and a plastic
shaft which pushes the antenna mast up, and pulls it back down.
The posts I read indicated that in cold weather, it was pretty common
for the plastic shaft to break.
After a short bit of thinking, I figured that the plastic is
going to be more brittle in the cold, and the antenna will be stiffer /
more difficult to push in the cold as well. Add to that some dried
up, dirty, thirteen year old lubrication, and you have a recipe for a
broken antenna. I also figured that if mine was making a lot of
noise, that was likely because the lubrication was dried up and not
doing it's job, and therefore putting a lot of extra load on the motor
and drive shaft.
On January 25th, with the weather forecast calling for high
temperatures in the single digits for the coming week, I decided I
probably should do something about the antenna. I grabbed a paper
towel, and a can of WD-40, and went to work. I turned the key on,
and fired up the stereo, then went to the antenna. I looked it
over good, and carefully straightened out a few minor bends in the mast,
then I folded up my paper towel, and sprayed some WD-40 on it. I
then used the towel to wipe the antenna mast good, making sure I removed
all the darkened, dirty deposits, and coated the entire mast with a new
layer of oil.
In the months that have followed (it is the end of April as I
write this) I have had to repeat the process of cleaning and coating the
antenna with WD-40 several times. I am now considering removing
the power antenna, to see if I can give the mecanism a more thorough
cleaning and lubrication with it out of the vehicle. |