wineguard antenna

[old_guy]

I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around a problem. I replaced the shaft and gears on my antenna. inside and out, lubed everything like I should but the antenna is very hard to put up and down. it requires a lot of effort to turn the crank. any solutions out there on how to make this crank easier?

[D_E_Bishop]

cyntdon2010 wrote:
Could the gears and teeth alignment be Off?

It is possible but it is highly unlikely. The worm Gear is on the crank handle shaft and the gear is part of the upper mast when the antenna is lowered and the worm gear is screwed into the gear housing. take a look at the Winegard Sensar RV TV Antenna Replacement Parts catalog and you'll see how it should look.

In order to test the alignment of the worm gear/crank shaft you would have to either look into the slot in the top of the housing or remove the mast and then reassemble the housing icluding the alignment cap for the end cap.

If you were to remove the alignment cap for the wormgear shaft and the shaft pitched to one side or another and would not easily align to the center to the hole the cap trreads into would be another way.

Only a screw driver and and a pair of long nosed pliers and a crescent wrench are needed to remove the cap and the e-clips.

[cyntdon2010]

Could the gears and teeth alignment be Off?

[MrWizard]

you replaced the gears
did you clean the Alum housing and the square tubes,
lube them and the pins
those two (tubes/arms) create a fair amount of leverage against the gear
any binding there will greatly increase the effort needed

[D_E_Bishop]

I understand there is a problem but is it the crank and shaft section, the masts to the rotating gear housing) carriage, where the shaft goes through the(gear housing) carriage. Do you see where it is going?

I'd remove the mast without the gear and test raising and lowering, then the mast with the gear. It does require getting on the roof and pulling the clevis pins and trying the operation. Disconnecting the masts one at a time lets you isolate the part(s) that are binding.

With a helper it should only take ten minutes at most.

If the mounting plates need to have a beveled gasket, they are available from Winegard.

Good luck and let us know what the solution is and how you found it.

The roof wedges are RW-2000, IW-5012. The carriage is really called a Gear Housing and the part number is RP-2049.

The E-clips om my Bounder's antennas became severely corroded and so I replaced the clevis pins and e-clips with 1/4-28 capscrews and nylok nuts. I wanted to stop some of what I thought was excessive clearances that allowed the antenna to wobble around in even a slight breeze. It had no effect on the torque required to raise or lower the antenna.

I used 2.5" capscrews for the GH and 2" for the antenna itself. That way the holes in the masts were rig==ding on a smooth surface and not on the threads. A little overkill maybe but that's okay.

[Lynnmor]

The roof curvature might be part of the problem. The antenna cranking mechanism can tolerate quite a bit of mismatch and the best position of the ceiling plate should be found before fastening it. Probably just a typical and sloppy installation. Try removing the screws from the inside plate and see if you can find the best location to remount it. Here is the manual, see if you might need a wedge. manual

[Jim]

Without any knowledge of the type of RV you have, I'd say that the difficulty with cranking your antenna is possibly caused by the curvature of your roof. It was probably put on in an awkward position for engineering & marketing reasons without thought of the difficulty of cranking it.

Only cure would be to move it to a flatter area of the roof.