What kind of grease?
 

My antenna on my W126 started sticking, and after disassembling the entire unit, it's clearly a worn mast (this is really good news!).

But the grease inside the unit is a bit old, and I want to make this assembly last another 105k miles after I put it back in.

What's the right kind of grease on the teflon gears? I was thinking of Penn Fishing Reel grease - it's great on gears, and does not hurt the Teflon washers in the reels, but I don't know if it will gum up in cold temperatures.

For anyone undertaking this task, by the way, I must again say this is not hard, and again I marvel at the simplicity of it all...

my antenna mast was rusted shut and I managed to restore it

that was not easy.

now it's good as new, clean it and grease it when it shows signs of sticking and it's all good :)

xp

i've used white grease with no problems.

Amy lithium-based grease should work fine. They're water resistant and widely available.

Thanks for the replys! I will try the old mast first, though I thig it's gone ($29.00 for a new one- that's not too bad). Thanks of the grease info!

Update
 

I comletely disassembled and cleaned out the insides of the antenna motor box, greased it up with white lithium spray grease (Track Auto, remember those guys?), excersied the antenna mast and cleaned it as best I could, reassembled all (getting that toothed Teflon rope in correctly took a trick using fishing line tied around the first tooth and pulling it as the rope got stuck at the end of the lowest tube guiding it into the gears), and guess what - it worked!

If the mast starts sticking again, then I'll throw it into the garbage heap, but for now everyting looks great.


Thanks to all of you for the advice!