Whip needed replacement as it got bent. The sound is due to motor.

Salim

 

Thanks . . after a month of grinding corn, it's back to grinding rocks again. (8D

 

Folks, I think that I have found a way to stop the antenna grinding for good.

I have switched from white lithium grease to my bicycle chain Teflon lube on the antenna since the Teflon lube is thinner. I had to get the antenna up and down 15 times because the Teflon lube brought up so much black soot and gunk from down under. I wiped the antenna clean each time until no more crap was coming up.

Now besides a faint whirring sound from the motor, there's absolutely no grinding. It's been like this for about a month now. Thought that I should share this with my fellow RX300 owners.

 

^^^ Awesome TY for that tip. Will deff. try this.

 

I cleaned ours with WD40 and then waxed it with a good auto wax containing silicone. Corrected problem for a month or so and I repeated process.

 

I don't know if this will help -- I have some noise from my antenna, and I don't think it extends completely, but it retracts completely. The dealer looked at it today -- said cable is broken inside motor and ideally needs replacement (I imagine antenna and cable together) but that motor would need to be disassembled to get broken piece of cable out. I saw some instructions searching the forums, so I may give it a try.

 

spray some silicon spray and have someone turn your radio on and off a billion times...it should do the job. took me like a half hour haha

 

Hay it's fixed !!! That tip about bicycle chain lube really did the trick! I'm not certain what the contents are but it's very thin. The antanna barfed up a bunch of black gook when I ran it up and down and up and down and up and down a bunch of time. I would run it up and down about 10 times, clean and relube; and do it again. I ran it up about 1/2 and down a bunch too since the bottom end is where the grinding happened. It's smooooooth now!

 

Proof is in the pudding.

Any one knows how the bicycle grease will interact with nylon/plastic?

Salim

 

Bicycle lube has to interact with nylon and plastic on a bicycle, so I'm confident it will be OK. For example, you've got the plastic of the rear deraillier pulleys (or the pulley dust seals on seal-bearing ones).

 

can we get a brand recommendation?

 

My pleasure. Found this gem purely by chance. I was greasing my bike chain in the garage with music going on the RX300. Then I looked at the antenna and figured what the heck. Mine is still all quiet after 6 weeks. I just did another 3 rounds of teflon lube tonight. Man I feel good. No more embarrassing grinding whilst sitting at red light.

Any brand of teflon lube will do fine. I got the cheap bike shop brand. I have the dry formulation since I don't ride my bike in rain, but I am thinking about buying the wet formulation for the winter.

 

I use a product by White Lightning called Raceday. It also has a Rustblock in the formula.

RK

 

Great tip. About a year ago I remember hearing the grinding and then shortly afterwards the nylon cable broke . I recently began to hear it again and I was fearing another mast/cable replacement but i'll try this trick. Thanks again!

 

Rk, thks great tip you and Harrier, did you get it at a bike store or an auto supply store? My antenna sounds like something about to pop through the side of the car!