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I have an antenna base out of a 78 f350 parts truck I’ve already scrapped that I’m trying to put into my 1979 daily driver.
Tag on on the antenna says D8tf-18a984-aa. Which to me decodes to a 78 truck antenna. Wire also says ford all up down it.
My 79 has never had a antenna, just s crappy base with the end of the cord cut off. Had to cut it off with a hacksaw, because the nut wouldn’t release. Under it my truck has no mounting holes for mounting screws, although it does have a 1” or so hole for the cord. That doesn’t matter I can drill it out.
The real problem is I can’t get the antenna in the last 1.5”. It bottoms out in the cowl. What should I do about this? What I took off my truck was a crappy “turn nut on top and release the claws inside the cowl” kind. I don’t want to have to use a Chinesium antenna when I have a super nice ford one right here but I don’t see how to get in all the way.
I just went and pulled mine off to see what you might be hitting, is your cable where it goes into the antenna have a metal wrap around it mine did and was bent towards the cab also its really close to your cowl vent on the inside try leaning the top towards the drivers side and see if it goes in. I pulled mine up and 2 times and had no problem 3rd time problem had to turn it towards me and lean the top to the drivers side to get it in.
Mine has no metal wrap after the cable leaves the hard metal of the base. Looking down the hole, there seems to be a brace that goes from under that corner of the windshield to the inner fender apron mounting bolts in the firewall. that’s what the antenna is hitting.
There is an inner wall below the fender. Your antenna should be roughly 3" from the gap to the hood to clear it. Those old claw-base antennae could get by with relatively little clearance, and since many dealers used them to install radios, their placement could be a little hit or miss.
If your hole is much further back you may have to create some clearance... the outer hole is probably 1", you may want to acquire a 7/8 or 3/4" hole saw to for the next level. Seems to me you could maybe feed the wire through a 1/2" hole, but you need to be fairly precise how you drill it and feeding the antenna cable may not be fun, and you will need to seal around the antenna wire with something like dum-dum.
Back in the day when you bought a radio over the counter, they came with a full size template to show where to drill the holes. Unfortunately there aren't any dimensions for the hole locations.
So you all think my hole was drilled wrong. Ugghhh I really really want to use the factory style base. I guess when I get home I’ll look down it and see just how far over it is, it wouldn’t kill me to just buy another smaller based antenna but dang I was excited. In other news I figured out the 76 am/fm radio has gone kaput. So I’ll need to buy s newer unit any way.
Does anyone one know how I can view the picture of the template a little clearer? I can’t make out what it says.
Since they're at full size already and clicking on them would not do anything, the only option (other than Mike uploading higher resolution images?) would be to right-click on each one and "save image as" to your computer. Then open it up in your own screen and see if you can enlarge them without so much distortion that you can't read the text anyway.
Hmm, let me try it right now. Quicker to do than to describe sometimes!
Just barely more legible.
If your eyes are not that great, you could try reading glasses and not enlarge it quite as much. But as soon as you get it to the point it would normally be easier to read, the words are just too blurry.
Good luck though!
And maybe Mike has a higher-res shot he can e-mail you.
I ran into the same problem on a 1979 truck of the hole being slightly in the wrong place and interference underneath. To SOLVE it I added a second stock black rubber base piece to get a little more height, the antenna stands straighter upright (or leaning in to centre of truck when viewed from in front of truck) but it screwed in with 4 longer screws and works fine being a stock antenna but having 2 black base pieces under the chrome trim top piece.
I ran into the same problem on a 1979 truck of the hole being slightly in the wrong place and interference underneath. To SOLVE it I added a second stock black rubber base piece to get a little more height, the antenna stands straighter upright (or leaning in to centre of truck when viewed from in front of truck) but it screwed in with 4 longer screws and works fine being a stock antenna but having 2 black base pieces under the chrome trim top piece.
Ditto. A friend also did that to mount the antenna.
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) would be to right-click on each one and "save image as" to your computer. Then open it up in your own screen and see if you can enlarge them without so much distortion that you can't read the text anyway.
