Thanks Jason!

What a lost f'ing cause, waste of money, and time. Stupid Landcruiser antenna switch. Bought a factory toyota fog light switch, and it worked just fine. Rubbed off the fog light symbol. Looks ok, but not as good as it could have been with the landcruiser switch. Oh well. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/shiner.gif" alt="" />

WHAT? <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> do you now have a fog light switch hooked up to your power antenna?as long as the pathes are right it will work,,but I am a little lost as to what you finally did to make it work,,,and did it work the way I tried to explain?

these damn power antennas can be very confusing. previous owner installed an alpine headunit and wired the amp remote lead to the antenna, so the antenna was up whenever the headunit powered up. i cut that wire so now it only goes up when i put it in cd mode. however it won't come back down until i turn off the unit.

i tried wiring a switch inline to control the antenna. all i achieved was either being able to control how far it went up OR being able to lower the antenna all the way whenever i chose. not what i desired, but i gave up. i would be happy with having the antenna drop when i switch back to cd mode.

Another forum member and I traded notes on the power antennas trying to figure out what was wrong with his... and even thought about writing an article about how these things work, but scrapped the idea due to the following..

During the process of comparing power antenna electrical schematics across the various vintage of Toyota vehicles, it was noticed that Toyota has made numerous changes in the power antenna design... apparently trying to make them more reliable e.g. a number of problems that have been posted on 4x4wire.com..

If you don't have the schematics for your exact year antenna, you may be in for a rough ride trying to figure out how it works.. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

I got it to work with the foglight switch just fine. I cut the power antenna switch from the stereo amp, added a wire from the the wire that went into the amp, and ran it to the switch, then I ran another wire out of the switch back to the lose antenna wire that leads to the power antenna, and the last prong, I grounded. Switch lights up when the antenna is up, and and doesn't when the antenna is down.


Jason, I did all that lead swappin, and all I got was some super heated switches. Got some smoke a couple of times, and at that point I said to hell with it.

Well,,,,,very sorry I couldnt be of help to you <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />,,,,I guess the later runners are very different,,,,if I was in Deutchland I would have run over and helped you out, if you were around the corner that is..haha.

Sorry I jumped in here so late. Is the stereo currently in your truck an OEM unit? There are only couple of aftermarket stereos out there (I think Alpine and Eclipse) that have the electronics to deal with Toyota's complicated power antenna design. The issue is this--there are two main power wires to the motor. One has power 100% of the time, even when the ignition is in the off position. The purpose of this wire is to provide power to pull the antenna down when the ignition is turned off. Then there's a second wire that gets power only when the OEM stereo is switched from CD mode to AM/FM mode to raise the antenna. An aftermarket stereo sends power through this wire regardless of what mode it's in--in the absence of the electronics that the OEM stereos have to differentiate between AM/FM and CD mode, the antenna will stay up when the headunit is on.

I know I haven't helped any here, but if anything I wanted to let you know you aren't the only one that has struggled trying to understand this stuff. Likely what you did was put a switch across the wire that gets power when in AM/FM mode (on the OEM stereo). With the switch open, the headunit can be operating but the antenna never receives the power the raise the antenna, much like having the OEM headunit in CD mode.

After doing some further research, I found the information I previously provided was for a 95 Landcruiser and is not the same as the switch you have for a 97. The 97 actually uses an auto antenna ECU with 11 wires going to it! This needless complexity reeks of Nissan engineering. I'm glad to hear the fog light switch is working for your antenna.

Thanks guys.

I may attempt it again at a later date, after the frustration wears off. I still have the switch, and it still works.

Boostedinline6, I have the OEM unit. It just seems like I need a relay or something. 2 of the Leads are for the lighting. It's the 2 outer leads. The 4 inner leads, 2 for up 2 for down. I got it to work if I held the buttons down, but as soon as I let up, the antenna would just go right back up. That's what really pissed me off, besides the smoke from trying some other ways of connecting it.