Hirschmann Not Working? Or is it?

[justinperkins]

A little back story: I have an 87 300TD with no radio and a broken antenna mast. In my opinion the broken antenna is much more unsightly than the missing stereo, so getting the antenna in working order was a higher priority than installing a stereo. I didn't feel like plunking down $40 to have a mast delivered to me, so I grabbed an antenna with a good mast at the junkyard. I figured I might have grabbed a good, working antenna, so I learned how to test the antenna.

This is what I learned, hope this helps somebody.

The antenna connector is 5-pin (it's really a 6-pin connector, but missing the #3 pin). #2 is hot (always hot) and #6 is ground. With just these two wires connected, your antenna wants to retract the mast. This is the antenna's steady state. The Antenna Up/Down switch on the dash sends a 12V signal to the #1 or #5 pin. I've got some faulty wiring at my switch right now so could not test these functions (so I don't know whether power at #1 makes the antenna go up or down).

When you power up your stereo, if the power antenna lead was properly connected, it will send 12 volts to the #4 pin, which makes the antenna go up. As soon as that power source is interrupted, the antenna immediately goes back down again, remember down is the antenna's steady state.

With this simple information I was able to determine that the basic wiring to my antenna was good, but the wiring from my antenna switch on the dash was bad. I am also able to harvest antennas from the junkyard and have the means to test them.

Hope this helps some people fix their antennas. I'm still on the fence as to whether I should have posted this in the Car Audio forum or not, but I like this forum a lot and want to help people out here. I never read the other forums and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

If you want pics, let me know and I'll post 'em.