www.RX7fb.com

I'm brand new to the forum. I'm in Arizona, USA. I bought my "new" (156,000 miles on it) red 1984 RX7 GSL-SE (with the fuel injection setup) about six months ago and have almost everything worked out. The car runs great (although there are still a couple of idle aggravations I'm still trying to work out)

The factory stereo/cassette went bad so I had a new Kenwood stereo installed today. My power antenna motor is shot, and blows the fuse when I connected it to its power plug in back near the antenna. It did however work fine as an antenna with my old radio and pulled in AM and FM radio. Now, with my new Kenwood stereo, FM works great but I am getting a lot of ignition noise with the AM radio on. The stereo install shop said they think this is because the ground setup isn't compatible with the new stereo. As a test I touched a wire to the stereo, then touched the other end of the wire with my fingers, and the static goes away. As soon as I take my finger away, the static comes back on. The stereo shop says I need to install a new antenna which will ground properly to the car body. I bought a new manual antenna and now the question is, how do I get the original power antenna out?

The shop manual I have says to pull off the rear side panel in the cargo area which I've done. I see the two bolts it says to remove, then unscrew the nut outside the car body on the antenna, and then remove the antenna assembly. All good except I can't see how the power antenna will wiggle out of the small space I can touch it through in the trunk. I see someone in the forum has removed their antenna so if someone could give me the details on how to get it out, I would be grateful. Is it just a matter of wiggling the power antenna assembly around in there until I get some angle to pull it out? (Hope that makes sense).

I'm looking forward to using this forum and happy I've found an active group like this, even if you're about 5,000 miles away!

Thanks!

Hi Stevos,
welcome to the forum!
A GSL-SE eh? I'd love one of those!
To get the electric aerial out, you need to undo the back light unit from the car and remove it ( the one next to the antenna obviously!)...... there are 6 or 8 10mm nuts holding it in place that you need to undo from inside the car ..... the antenna will then come out through the hole where the rear light unit was.
If you get a chance, post some photos up of your car...... we love photos on here!

cheers,
Ian

What Ian said, lol. I found to get mine out I pretty much had to remove all the trunk interior panels and still needed to get in through the rear light aperture as well. There's like a web built into the inner fender structure with holes through it you can just get your hands through, if they're small. It's a pig of a job, have to work blind an be prepared to graze your arms getting in there. Repeatedly

Wish I knew (thought) about taking out the light, I did mine all blind, hands down through the hatch into the hole.

Hello RX7 Fans:
Thanks to your advice, I was able to get my bad factory power antenna out through the tail lamp hole. I ended up having to break off the antenna itself since it wouldn't retract all the way but then out it came without too much trouble. After you unscrew the trunk panel where the antenna is (just a few philips screws after you remove the little hole covers with a small screwdriver), the factory antenna is simply held on by two nuts inside the trunk, and the nut on the outside of the car body that tightens down over the antenna. Disconnect the power connecter to the antenna which, if you go to a manual antenna, you can just leave there after you're done. It won't hurt anything. The tail lamp, as suggested, is held on by eight 10mm size nuts on the inside of the trunk. The metal cover then wiggles out. It looks like it won't come out because the jack holding assembly is right behind it, on my left hand drive US model anyway. However, the copper colored metal cover slides out sideways toward the middle of the trunk..toward the trunk light, after you disconnect the wiring harness plug to the tail lamps. Hard to describe but you'll get it if you have to do this. Then the tail lamp pulls straight out the back of the car. Underneath that my tail lamp gaskets are pretty much deteriorated so I'm looking for some suitable gasket material I can replace that with later.

Installing the new manual antenna was pretty straightforward, with one problem it did take me a while to solve. The hole in the car that the factory power antenna goes through is just slightly bigger than the fittings that come with an aftermarket manual antenna. I solved this by getting two metal washers (make sure they're any type of metal that will conduct electricity as this is where your antenna makes a ground, and the better the ground the less static you'll have with AM radio). The outside diameter of the washers need to be big enough to cover the fender hole size, and the inner open diameter of the washers must be big enough for the antenna body to go through. One washer went over the top of the antenna base (the black plastic tube the antenna pushes down into), and down onto a metal "shelf" on the top of that. This is what conducts "ground" to the antenna. You may also need to install the metal "rocking horse" piece there that you took out with your old factory antenna. The one that came with my new kit was too small. Then the new antenna goes through the tail light hole up through the antenna hole with that metal washer and/or "rocking horse" piece pressing up to the car body inside the trunk. Holding that in place with one hand, put the rubber gasket half ball from the new antenna kit on the car body with the antenna through it (outside the car body), then put the second identical metal washer over that, then screw down the lock nut that came with the new antenna kit and you're done. You'll have to mess around a bit when you tighten the nut here to get the antenna oriented the way you want. I had to use a little silicone seal to attach the little plastic "chrome" finisher cover for the antenna base that came with the kit to keep that in place.

Important: When you have your original antenna out, be sure to take some sandpaper and reach up inside and sand the metal around the antenna hole from the inside. This will remove any corrosion there so when you press the antenna up against the car body from inside it will make a good ground. Then install the new antenna. And of course don't forget to re-connect the wiring to the tail light and connect the new antenna to the cable where the old antenna connection used to go. You'll see that right there in the trunk too.

It took me about three hours of messing about to figure this out so hopefully this will save someone a couple hours of aggravation I went through to make it work.

Steve in Arizona
1985 RX7 GSL-SE

good news steve, sure it's nice to have some tunes again while you cruise along the highway.
although you should be enjoying the sound of that rotary engine

You are correct! I'm getting great rocking music in the car now but when I turn off the radio, the car sounds even better all by itself!

By the way, for anyone interested, my new stereo is a Kenwood KDH 752 HD. They go for $179 here. It sounds great with the stock speakers, much better than the original radio, has bluetooth so you can do phone calls right from the stereo, etc. and so many features it's hard to figure them all out.It's turned out to be a great buy but the primary reason I bought it is that you can match up the stereo illumination almost exactly with the stock gauges and the other orange red illumination on the dash. It's so pretty at night I have to remember to keep my eyes on the road and not stare at the dash on the RX7!

Good how-to there, thanks for taking the time!

I was amazed how good the original speakers are in the FB, too. Mine are Clarion, who were one of the brands back in the day, and it seems for good reason. I get better sound in the FB than in my FD, despite having upgraded all the speakers in the FD with decent components and it having a much better headunit. Goes to show you don't always get what you pay for Mind you, there's a lot less space int he FD for sound to move about in, and the armageddon exhaust probably doesn't help