Saab: Electric antenna wiring & trouble shooting ...

I have some trouble with electric antenna, it does not work so to speak. I
opened it up, and noticed that there actually quite a few things that may
malfunction. What does typically break in electric antenna? I'm talking
about '99 9-3.

I noticed there are two wires coming to antenna unit: one of them seems to
provide +12V regardless of ignition position, purpose of the another one is
unknown. Is it ground, or some kind of signaling? If latter one, how is
antenna grounded?

These two wires seem to connect to black box in antenna unit, which has
three wires going to actual antenna motor module. What are these three
wires? I'm guessing they are +12V and two grounds, which are active
depending on the desired travelling direction. Is that right? What is the
purpose of this black module? It is approx. size of one cubic inch.

How does antenna know/decide when to go up and when to go down?

Please, help me out. I really would love to know how it is supposed to work
so that I could try to locate&fix it.

BR, Zon

Zon wrote:
 

My bet is that your problem is mechanical and not electrical. Open the housing
to see if the cord is broken, before playing with the electrics.

We had a problem with our antenna in our 1999 9-3. Turned out that the plastic
toothed cord that drives the antenna up and down had broken. This is apparently
very common and we found a couple of sites that gave good instructions on how
to put in a new one (which cost about EUR 30). Try

http://www.thesaabsite.com/93/93faqs.htm#How do I replace my broken Antenna
Mast?

to see how to feed in the new cord and antenna. The writer assumes a broken
antenna rather than a broken cord, but the instruction on how to feed the new
cord is still relevant.

If the cord is broken, the broken section must be removed from the housing and
the antenna assembly (minus antenna shaft and cord) must be reinstalled and
connected (including grounding) before the new antenna and cord are fed in.

Tell us how it goes.

/Robert