My wife parked our Prius Gen 3, shall we say, not well in our double parker (common here in Europe - one car is parked over another on a platform which lowers and raises so that each can access their car). It was up to me to unpark it, which I did but in doing so the after market antennae (a short one which I ordered from amazon because we have such limited space in the double parker) snapped off, leaving just the threads in the antennae base. Any tips on how to get those threads out so i can put a new shorty in? I've tried a needle nose pliers - no luck. Thanks!! Oddfodder Prius 2012 Gen 3 avg 4.4km/100 Liters (53.7 MPG)
would an easy out work? i'd love to see a pic, and also one of the double parker. sounds like a great idea, are they expensive? we have them in commercial city lots where space is tight.
What you need is a screw extractor of the appropriate size. These look like common drill bits, but the threads are reversed to allow them to do the job. .
Once the antenna body breaks off the thread portion that is left in the base no longer has any torque against the threads. The small diameter of the base threads will make it very difficult to drill to use a screw extractor. My suggestion is to use two very sharp picks to try to unscrew the broken portion out of the base. It’s somewhat of a long shot but it can be done with a little finesse. Just hope the threads haven’t been treated with thread lock.
Thanks to all. I ended up using the larger part of the broken screw and thread that back into the base - there was just enough room to do that over the broken part that was still in the base - there are still enough threads that the antenna caught. Seems to be working fine. Got lucky I guess!
