I have a 01 Sport Ltd and the mast would only go down with a little help tap from above. I took to Mitsu and they said a gear in the motor is bad, Now I get it back from them with the antenna in the down position and it wont go back up with no reception. I bought a new antenna off ebay thinking it shouldn't be to hard to do, but before taking stuff apart I was hoping someone might have a tip or two when doing this like accessing the motor assembly. HELP!!!!!

 

Since this is a generic problem I can be of some assistance. The gear in the motor is probably fine what happens in most cases is the Nylon runner in the mast becomes brittle and a portion of it breaks off in the motor causing the mast to raise but as the broken runner clears the gear it will not retract without being pushed down so the gear can engage. Normally the only way to remove the broken section is to pull the antenna motor, open it remove the broken runner, usually re-grease the gears while you are at it then remount the motor. You then feed the new runner into the motor during its normal retraction sequence and run it up and down a couple times to set it.

 

I thank you for your response but what I'm really looking for is how do I get the antenna motor out? Do I get to it from the wheel well or do I get it from the engine compartment?