Radio Aerial

Hi, has anyone had to replace the radio aerial base on a Symbol ?(or similar). On our van it is located in the front of the fibregalass roof.
The problem is that it is behind the roof lining.  To remove this appears to be one almighty task as all cupboards, washroom and wardrobe etc would also need removing.
My plan is to cut a hole with a hole cutter through the lining to access the back of the aerial.

any other thoughts ?

On my symbol the original aerial is behind the clock which is simple to remove, you may want to take the courtesy light out as well,
Chris

Hi Carver,
I have changed the aerial base in my 2002 Symbol. It isn't easy but by taking out the overhead locker front, the side shelf uprights and unscrewing the headlining back to the end of the side shelves you can drop the headlining down enough to get to the aerial base. 
It has a sheet of aluminium bonded to the roof which the earth of the aerial is attached to. 
Good luck.

Thanks for your replies.

In the end, I 'bit the bullet' and went for it.
My over cab area must be different to yours Cookie99 as ours was fabricated with the upper bed arrangement (4 berth), instead of the locker/cupboard.  In ours a smaller piece of roof lining is overlapped, by many inches, by the roof lining that runs the rest of the van, so dropping the smaller section alone is not possible.  
I cut a 50mm hole to gain access to the aerial, that I will cover with something appropriate.  It cant be seen when the flap that encloses the over cab area is shut so no real problem.

The issue I had was that as I undid the fixing of the aerial, the captive nut pulled apart the end of the aerial cable as the earthing strap part was glued to the roof by the silicon that AS had used.  The result was that the connection of the minutely thin wire in the centre of the co-ax cable was broken from the other section.  I had to re-solder this in-situ.  VERY fiddly !
What I assumed was going to be a relatively straightforward job turned into a bit of a nightmare.

Interestingly Cookie99, mine doesn't appear to have the aluminium sheet that yours does.  I was expecting to find one 

Hi Carver, glad you managed to sort it. My roof lining was in 2 pieces on recollection and I took out the front section and dropped the rear section. 
I also remember I had trouble with the earth and had to solder it as you have. 
It was a real pain job! Also the fibreglass insulation proved itchy.

Carver wrote:Hi, has anyone had to replace the radio aerial base on a Symbol ?(or similar). On our van it is located in the front of the fibregalass roof.
The problem is that it is behind the roof lining.  To remove this appears to be one almighty task as all cupboards, washroom and wardrobe etc would also need removing.
My plan is to cut a hole with a hole cutter through the lining to access the back of the aerial.

any other thoughts ?

I had to do this job on my Duetto and it's an absolute pain. Very bad planning by AS as an internal copper braided aerial fitted in the roof would have saved all the mither, plus it would have been maintenance free for life.

Instead of using the "rubber duck" aerial (which had rotted at the base), i sourced a suitable base mount from my local scrap yard plus aerial. Cost a couple of quid.....but the work involved in removing the old mount and re-fitting the new.....my God!! Ridiculous!! What takes 5 minutes to do on a a car with roof mount aerial took almost a day to do on the van. Removal of two forward inner roof sections, then required a friend to clamber up some ladders whilst i bolted it from the inside.

My aerial mount came off a Rover 200 and the aerial off a Citroen. Looks much neater than the stupid "rubber duck" aerial too!

Glad to see you got sorted.

Interesting that an aluminium base to the aerial was used, I thought a ferrous ground plane was more effective.