Kaboom

[Herb]

Urgh, just the thing to happen on a Monday morning.For some reason I decided to use the remote to open the garage door from inside my car. Just as I was backing up, KABOOM!Then I noticed something rolling down the windshield, and it was my antenna.The door apparently didn't open up all the way and the antenna hit the door as I was backing out. Snapped the top part of the base and left a mark on the crossbar of the rack, as well as a dent where the base of the antenna is mounted to the roof!

[Herb]

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[Herb]

Sorry about the first image, it's just a little too bright out there right now, but you can see that the base is no longer flush to the roof of the car.In the second image you can see the antenna, along with the top part of the base that I unscrewed from

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[Herb]

quote:crap it even lifted the antenna base from the roof!!!!Yeah because it was pushed forward as I was backing up. The dent is on the forward portion of the base where it forms a point.

[Herb]

I've adjusted the levels again and took another shot

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[KSNeptune]

Sorry to see that happen to you. My vibe also got bit by my garage door, but in a different way. My vibe is almost 2 feet shorter than the pickup that I used to park in the garage. So it took me awhile to figure out just how far to pull in. The rear of my garage is woodworking workshop space, so any space the car doesn't take up is useful for woodworking. As such I tried to pull in only as far as I absolutely needed to, leaving only one or two inches from the garage door when it closed. But the danged door has a metal bar sticking out that I hadn't noticed. The first time I got a little too close to the door that bar put a scrape in the top edge of my hatch, just melow the glass.So I hung me a little tennis ball from the ceiling, and now park perfectly by stopping when the ball touches my front window.My elderly Dad had trouble several times backing into his garage door before it had gotten all the way up. I eventually rigged up a green light that would only come on when the garage door was all the way up. It's mounted on the wall in front of his car. He now won't start backing up unless he's got a green light.KSNeptune

[Toasted7]

That green light is a cool idea! I have used the tennis ball thing before and it works VERY well.

[drunkenmaxx]

i just have to say that the title of this thread gave me flashbacks of flying glass and cynders!(see thread titled boom if you're lost)hahaha

[Herb]

Cool idea with the light. I should try something like that. What would I need? Something like a limit switch on the garage door track?Getting back to topic, I called up a GM dealer on the antenna base and I was quoted $53.85CAN part #88971569.And out of curiosity I called Toyota for the part and was quoted $180.00CAN Part #86300-02100. The guy told me that there's some kind of amplifyer built into the base?

[AKLGT]

wow! sorry to hear that. hope you can get it fixed without too much cost.

[PiperH]

This is kind of off-topic, but I was just looking at the pictures of your Vibe. Your interior is so cool! I love the red trim. You actually took the pieces off and painted them? I'm not that creative or handy. Could I get something like that done, possibly at the dealer or a detailer? Red wouldn't work because my car is orange. But I'm not fond of the silver it came with. Any suggestions?Actually, reading a little farther along, I see that you had the trim repainted professionally by someone in Alaska. Do you think that's preferable to buying a trim kit?Piper

[KSNeptune]

The green light only needs to come on when the door is all the way up. So I made a bracket that clamps to a track rail. It holds a push-button switch. When the door gets that far back it presses the button down, which turns ON the green light. A two-lead wire (lamp cord) runs from the switch to the light. The light I cobbled together from an old 6v dry-cell flashlight. I painted the inside of the glass lens with translucent green paint. The bulb is 6-volt, so I power it with a little transfomer plugged into a garage outlet. I'd take a photo, but my Dad and Mom have since moved from that house into elderly care facilities. Fortunately my Dad now parks under a carport, with no garage door to hit. KSNeptune

[Herb]

Just thought I'd update you guys on the status of this. I've finally gotten around to having the dent repaired this past weekend.I used a relatively new proceedure known as PDR or Paintless Dent Removal. In my case the guy used an "S" shaped hook that he placed in one of the existing holes in the support frame on the roof and used a series of bars leveraged through the hook to push the dent back up. He also used something that looked like a screwdriver with a rubber tip and an hammer to help push down some areas as well.The process took just over an hour and the dent was successfully repaired without damaging the original paint. My thanks to http://www.dentsunlimited.com/home.htmlThe standard method of repair for this dent at most body shops would have been to sand, fill the dent with a filler like Bondo, and re-paint. This would have taken a couple of days and there's always the concern of overspray, unproperly masked areas and maybe paint that might not match up perfectly.Anyways, here's a couple of pictures of the before and after.

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[Herb]

Here's the picture of the repaired surface with the new antenna base installed.

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[scherry2]

looks real good!!