bri67ran

I've got a 94 Lexus ES300 with 120K running pretty well. I got the car a year ago from father-in-law (thank you!) and have slowly repaired or (more accurately) had repaired some issues, such as front half shafts (yes plural), four new tires, four new brake pads, tune-up and transmission service. Feeling confident in my limited repair abilities I decided to tackle the broken power antenna myself.

p.s. I'm somewhat verbose, but riddled with details. Please be patient.

This has been broken for years according to FIL, not extending or retracting at radio power on/off. I got tired of the buzzing noise accompanying each failed attempt so had my Dad pull the relay - he's got automotive repair genes, while I've just got jeans. So I recently bought a new extendable antenna and drive cable, took the whole thing off the car and out of trunk. I had to disassemble the power unit since the old drive cable broke inside, (fascinating goop inside there BTW) but managed that OK. I probably did it about three times to get the installation sequence correct, hoping to have the motor draw the cable in. Gave up, coiled it in manually and reinstalled the hard way. All cables together, relay back in, let's try to use this thing!

Since I'm here, you can imagine that now the motor will NOT drive the antenna up and down as it should. The motor did work before, I swear! However, now additional strange electrical occurrences have arrived - dome light will not work under any circumstances, or personal map light, or power door locks (remotely or using switch). Also, the door chimes do not sound when door opened with key in ignition and oddly the trip odometers reset themselves to 0.0 whenever car is turned off.

UPDATE 11/9:
I looked at all the fuses (including under hood) last night since not sure which controls this "group". They appear intact - could they be busted without visual change? I removed the relay to see if it was causing problem, but nope. The antenna power unit has a motor on it, I removed that to pull the antenna up and noticed that one of the loops in the armature was bent against the bushing (not sure I got that right). Could that be it? I would think if that was shorting the fuse would blow, is it drawing all the power across it now?

I've not yet taken the battery cable off (i.e. reboot the electrical system). Not sure what else to try, and since this all worked only 48 hours ago it seems too coincidental to have this many failures.

Help please!!

bri67ran

Looks like I've stumped everyone!

Well, I took the battery cable off for 20 minutes, hoping to reset the computer. No help!

Oh, and since I wanted reception I left the antenna up. Of course the car wash bent the antenna! I am pretty stupid!

bri67ran

I guess I'll keep responding until somebody "gives in" and blesses me with their wisdom.

A guy at work (famous last words) thinks that maybe the harness to the antenna motor shorted out (?) and has killed the hot trying to pass through. This he suspects is what causes the rest of the courtesy features to fail, even though the fuse is still operational.

Any thoughts on that?

Please, I'm dying here.!!!

bri67ran

I guess I'll keep responding until somebody "gives in" and blesses me with their wisdom.

A guy at work (famous last words) thinks that maybe the harness to the antenna motor shorted out (?) and has killed the hot trying to pass through. This he suspects is what causes the rest of the courtesy features to fail, even though the fuse is still operational.

Any thoughts on that?

Please, I'm dying here.!!!

lexusk8

I'll move this to Maintenance and see what happens with the responses, OK?

kyle8744

i have the same problem. the belt inside the antenna's motor was broken. i in stalled a new one, but it still doesn't work. maybe i'll just buy a new non retractable flexible antenna.

VVT-i

I think you need a new antenna assembly( with motor and cable). I don't know how did you manage to manually get an aftermarket antenna cable inside the factory housing, but you did it and you're stumped me....

bri67ran

I had to disassemble the whole thing, starting at the antenna mount on the rear quarter panel and continuing down to the motor housing itself. I had seen it in a web page, so it was fairly familiar to me. Here is the link - http://carstereohelp.com/repairDoItY...mryPwrAntR.htm

The problem I ran into was that I took off the motor drive (seen asa golden cylinder in photo 10), when I really should not have. When I put it back in, I got the coils somehow pressed against the armature .

This of course shorted out the whole %*#@ thing, but most importantly has killed the hot wire to the rest of the circuit - I think. The problem now is that many courtesy functions are not working (interior courtesy lights, map light, trip odometer, keyless entry, key chime, etc.) I can only assume they are "behind" the antenna on this circuit, the radio must be in front of it since it works. The circuit breaker itself works, as well as the one in the ECU under hood.

How can I test to see if the connector has truly killed the hot? Can I fix it, re-wire it myself? I'd like to get all these functions back, even a new motorized antenna someday. Please HELP

bri67ran

Finally got it fixed. Thank God for my Dad who knows more about cars. There was another fuse panel in the hood compartment (there are two!!! surprise). This one had a 20A micro-fuse shorted out on the DOME circuit. It was cutting off the dome light, chimes, trunk light, door light, power door lock, map light and trip odometer. Strange that all those things were on that circuit, but whatever.

Won a new antenna with motor relay on E-bay this weekend and will install next weekend. Fully functional, fully contained - so maybe I won't screw this one up.

All is right with the Lexus world again.


Update 5/31
Installed the new antenna about three weeks ago and working great. Up and down smooth, and picking up all the NPR I could want now!

asualumni

I have a 1996 ES300. About 3-4 months ago, we noticed that our trunk, power door locks, chime and internal lights wouldn’t work anymore. Well, easy assumption was a blown fuse and luck would have it, I was right! Replaced the fuse (in the engine compartment fuse “block”) and things worked again!

But, immediately after running an errand down the street, the aforementioned functions stopped working again?! WTF?! OK, replaced the fuse again, and sure enough, turned the car on and off a couple times, and fuse blew again (grrrrrr) . Tried for a couple days to figure out the problem and (sorry to say) I gave up – screw it, I’ll just use the key to open the trunk from now on.

Well, fast forward to this week, and I (finally) had some free time to see if I couldn’t try to solve this problem again. Searched the forum and found this post… reading it, I remembered that around the same time we started having fuse issues, I remembered that we also had our power antenna break (it no longer retracts – just sticks straight up). So, I skipped over to the back of the car (with great anticipation that this would work), moved the cover to get to the antenna, simply unplugged the power adapter to the antenna (it’s the little white plug RIGHT next to the actual power antenna assembly - which in my case is round metal piece that has a copper color), put in a new fuse and Ta-Da… we’re back in business – the fuse no longer breaks!!!

I’m just guessing, but, maybe when the antenna broke, the metal chord that moves the antenna up and down, somehow got loose inside the assembly and contacted the metal housing, which then created some sort of short and/or power/ground issue???

MANY MANY Thanks to the forum and you savvy individuals for saving me some calorie burning moments, by allowing me to stay in the car and not have to get my lazy @$$ out of my car and walk to the back of the car every time I need to open the trunk 

I’m hooked – CLUBLEXUS RULES!!!