Well, after bragging about my original Hirschman antenna motor, it has suddenly lost its mind. When I turn it off it does not retract - I have to use a key to short circuit two of the flat copper strips inside the motor to make it retract. Of course it works fine going up; if I forget and leave the radio on, it goes up when I start the car - then when I turn it off I have to do the short circuit thing again.

I have had this puppy out of the car and opened up before when it did not work at all. Think I messed it up myself by getting one or two sets of the points out of kilter - but I bent one of the flat copper switches so that the points gap looked about right and it worked again until this week.

Does anyone have any idea what to do? The motor is obviously good but something is out of adjustment. I am comfortable with taking it completely apart but am not sure what to look for.

Thanks again for the help. Oh yes, the inside switch has stopped too - related???

I would clean the switch for a first step. Just pry it carefully out of the dash with a small flathead screwdriver, it snaps into place. However I would suspect the relay is on the fritz, I wish I could tell you where it is located but I'm at work

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TC
Current stable:
- 2004 Mazda RALLYWANKEL
- 2007 Saturn sky redline
- 2004 Explorer...under surgery.

Past: 135i, GTI, 300E, 300SD, 300SD, Stealth

I am quite comfortable taking out the dash switch; I just finished (3 months ago) removing the wood panel and putting all new lights. No, that did not mess up the switch; it worked for some three months. But I will take it out and clean it up.

Relay - are you thinking that a relay might be what is causing the switch not to work? Makes sense. However the symptom of the Hirschman is that it does not make that complete, maybe 15 second cycle after I get it to retract. {Or maybe the relay is hooked into the ignition?}

The way it is supposed to work is this - turn the radio off, it retracts fully, then it spins for about 15 seconds (guess it is making sure the retract is complete), then it goes off.

So not it neither retracts by itself nor spends another 15 seconds once I release the short circuit.

Cleaned and hooked the inside switch back up. No change so that was not it. I did notice however that the Hirschman seems to be running and running after the mast goes up; unable to hear this until I just turned the ignition switch to accessory and let it go up. Can clearly hear the Hirschman running after it should have stopped with the mast fully raised. Scratching my head again. This now sounds like maybe one of the multiple sets of points may be stuck closed. But need some more guesses before I take it out of the car.