Hi,

I bought some stripes and am ready to install them. They're going up the middle of the roof and hood. But I haven't been able to figure out how to temporarily remove the antenna base. Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

John

 

I hope you have skinny hands...

Pull off the top part of the weatherstripping so you can drop the headliner a bit. Close to the edge, there are a couple of connectors that need to come apart, pink and purple IIRC. Follow the pigtails up to the base, where you should feel a pretty big nut. I've used a socket wrench, but due to a total lack of space I had to put the socket on the nut, then fit the wrench to the socket. I've also used an adjustable wrench (ick), because it's lot thinner. The shaft coming down from the base is split so the wires are out of your way, which is nice.

All of this will be done blind, unless you want to pull down your whole headliner. Fun stuff.

 

Thanks! I'll give it a go this weekend.

John

 

Can you reach it from the rear sunroof opening? For those that have a sunroof that is...

 

Just found this thread. Great info! I'm gonna have to do this too now, to my '05 coupe, bacause my dash-mounted XM antenna is not working out for me. I live in a high drop-out area, and the antenna mounted on the dash is just not cutting it.

So, what I want to do is mount the XM antenna on the roof, just forward of the stock FM antenna base, running the lead down under the base and into the car that way, thus necessitating at least loosening the base to get the wire through. BTW, mounting the antenna aft of the base is not an option b/c the hatch will not clear it when opened (despite what others here have said), and mounting it on either side of the base would just look plain stupid.

So, being that I don't have a sunroof, I just undo the weatherstripping on the top of the hatch opening and squeeze my fat hand and wrench in there and find and loosen that nut, right? Is there enough room to do this w/o causing damage to the headliner? Would I be better off with a 17mm wrench instead of a socket/ratchet? In the interest of preventing water leaks, should I run the wire under the rubber gasket, against the sheetmetal, or between the plastic part of the base and the rubber gasket? I would greatly appreciate any answers I could get to these questions!

 

I pulle dthe weather stripping back, and popped the rear alarm cover out, so i had two places to get my hands in, used a crescent wrench to loosen the bolt, took the rest out by hand, and pulled the antenna off and replaced it with a different kind of antenna so I could have a HAM radio in the car, just be gentle with the headliner and don't pull it further than you need to and tuck it all back into the weather stripping and it should handle a little temporary manipulation.

Here's the results of my project...

 

Thank you! I have that alarm cover thingie too, even though I don't have the alarm . Good to know that's another way to gain access.