So give ME the stupid award!

[davew833]

I consider myself a pretty good mechanic... I've done engine rebuilds/swaps, clutches, tranny swaps, differentials, etc., all with a fair degree success. However, every once in a while I do something that makes me question whether I ought to quit tinkering with cars and take up knitting or something.

I was poking around outside last Saturday (the first warm day of the year!) with my '95 LSi and decided I'd tackle a slight problem with the antenna retracting. It went up and down fine, but stopped going down with about 3" of antenna sticking out. I looked at it closely and noticed that there was a slight kink in the bottom of a segment which prevented the inner segments from retracting all the way. I figured if I pulled the shaft out, took it apart, and shoved a rod or dowel of some kind inside the kinked segment, I could re-expand it to proper shape and the antenna would work properly. Why go to all of the trouble? Well, a new antenna shaft is expen$ive, I had the time, the weather was nice, and I thought it would be a moderate challenge with a good chance of success.

So I got the antenna shaft out and apart and started looking around the garage for a long-ish steel rod with a slightly larger diameter than the antenna that I could insert and push the kink out of the shaft with. Finally, I picked up what I thought was a discarded worn-out trunk strut (which I had replaced with a new one) from my old Honda Accord. The shaft looked to be just the right size, so I took my hacksaw to the strut. It turned out to be too big, so I ground down the strut shaft segment until it fit.

Well after a few hours (!) of work, grinding, hammering, etc., I got the kink out of the antenna shaft, but it's not really designed to be disassembled and put back together, and it still didn't extend/retract very smoothly. After that, I found I couldn't get the plastic antenna leader to catch and retract into the motor. After much trying, I think I killed the motor itself because all I could hear was the motor relays clicking-- no whirring sound. Then, the car battery died from the trunk light being on. Finally, it got to be 11 p.m. and I gave up on the whole thing.

The next day, I was reading the board here, and got to thinking about hood struts. I remembered I'd pulled a good set from a junkyard SVX a month or so ago, and hadn't seen them with my other SVX parts in the garage the day before. My heart sank as I realized what might have happened, and a quick visit to the garage confirmed it. The "WORN-OUT HONDA TRUNK STRUT" I'd cut up to fix my antenna with, was NOT a Honda strut, It was one of my GOOD SVX HOOD STRUTS! I felt so stupid I laughed aloud.

So, I'm out a mostly-working power antenna, possibly the motor, and a good SVX hood strut I was saving for some future occasion. Is there a moral here? Yeah, don't do what I did! Keep your GOOD parts WELL AWAY from your scrap pile. Oh, and laugh at me if you must, but LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES!