Power Antenna Woes

[desertred]

My guide for the power antenna on my 88 Cherokee must have broken as it is stuck in the raised position and the motor just keeps runnign with no mast movement. I have worked around this by pulling the fuse, but as you can imagine, this has gotten old. I wanted to turn my power antenna into a standard one by disconnecting the motor. However, as I was attempting to remove the inner fender, I found the the nuts securing the inner fender were frozen and started to break them off. So, I nixed that idea. Next, I tried to disconnect the antenna relay harness from under the dashboard, but could not get the harness connector out of the relay for the life of me! I do not have the factory electrical diagrams. My question is: can I just cut the wires running between the relay and the power antenna to kill the antenna motor without affecting the operation of any other components? Does anyone know where I can get the nuts and bolts to secure the inner fender if I have to return to that method?

 

[AZ Jeff]

Yes, you can cut the wires to the relay, but I would tape them up on the then-bare ends, to avoid a short later.

If you want to fix this more professionally, the bolts that hold the inner fender on are actually studs that are welded to a bolster plates that attach the urethane fender flare on the outside of the metal fender.

I broke almost all of my studs off when I changed my power antenna to a fixed mast type. I fixed the broken stud problem by drilling out all the broken studs, and pressing in carriage bolts into the bolster plates. The end result was a professional fix that took me about 2 hours on the bolster plates (therre are 3), and about 2 hours on the antenna itself. It was a long afternoon........