Electric Antenna, (or is it an aerial)?

[grady]

My 280i has a up-down antenna switch un-related to the operation of the radio. At the antenna end are 2 leads which are powered in turn by the up-down operation of the switch (plus the black ground/negative wire).

I had to replace the antenna with a more conventional one which requires 1 one constantly-on hot lead (to pull down the antenna after the car is switched off) and one switched-by-the-radio (control) hot lead. (I would prefer the antenna to retract when the radio is off rather than remembering after the car is turned off and I'm mid-way through putting the cover on.)

Before I start tearing apart the dash and start rewiring things, does anyone have a simple jumper suggestion that would leave things original but let the antenna work? Grady

BTW - You lucky dogs who get to listen to your howing V-8s need not tell me I shouldn't listed to the radio.

[stainless_steve]

BTW - You lucky dogs who get to listen to your howing V-8s need not tell me I shouldn't listed to the radio.

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ok then i won't

[danny hoffman]

I think you are going to have to pull the dash, you need a live feed from the radio. It's not difficult

[tasmin83]

Grady,
You could take the simplistic approach like I did...
I just chucked the electric aerial after it died and
put in a fully retractable manual aerial. It has been
problem free for years.

[grady]

For future reference:

Not heeding Marshall's advice, I unplugged the aerial switch (but left it in the dash for now).

At least one of the feeds to the 8 pin connector was constantly hot so I jumped that across to one of the 2 wires running to the aerial. The blue aerial wire from the radio plugged into the pin for the 2nd wire. I pushed the connector block back into the radio cavity. Quite simple once I had it apart. Grady