Internally Controlled Antenna

 I love weird, gimmicky engineering.

In 1953, one of the myriad of options for my Studebaker was an internally controlled antenna. This nifty little thing allowed the driver to reach under the dash, and crank a little knob on the kick panel to raise and lower the radio antenna. When one came up for sale recently, I had to have it—I mean what person would have bought the AC-2300 Stratoline Automatic Tuning 8-Tube Radio for $81.25 without springing an extra $10.25 for the AC-2303 Internally Controlled Antenna? (That’s a total of $1,028.28 in today’s prices, if you were curious. That better be a nice sounding AM radio for a thousand bucks!)

But of course that means drilling a hole through a freshly-painted fender.

Wouldn’t it be better to just get an internal antenna and hide it under the headliner?

Fortunately, as I’ve mentioned numerous times here, Studebaker enthusiasts have a wonderful support network. A quick call to the Studebaker National Museum ended up with a photocopy of the installation instructions, complete with a template for drilling the hole, in my mailbox a few days later. I guess there’s no putting this off then.

A quick tap on a center punch and I was set to drill. The instructions called for a 15/16” hole saw, but the best I could come up with was a 7/8”. It worked just fine.

Only a tiny tear in the paint—not bad. The gasket will cover that.

Next up, the install. It goes in from the inside.

Had to drill a couple of small holes for the mounting screws.

And here’s the completed job:

Wait, where did those red seats come from?

Updates

 It has been awhile.

I’ve continued to work on the Stude off and on over the last couple of years. It has mostly been a matter of putting things back together, and troubleshooting when there’s a problem (for example, my headlights wouldn’t work, so I busted out my trusty voltmeter and went through the system to identify the fault. It ended up being a faulty dash switch.) But mostly it has been waiting for the upholstery shop. 

Which apparently closed. I’d been in contact with the owner, who kept saying, “yeah, the seats are stripped down and we’re ready to start on them,” but then wouldn’t give me a date to bring the car up, and then stopped answering the phone. 

So I made a decision—I’m going to do as much of this as I can myself. To that end, a visit to Studebaker John landed me with a set of front and rear seats out of a 57/58 Silver Hawk. I’ve decided to go back to a bench seat front because it just looks right. But for that to work for me, I’ll need to modify them. First. I’ll need to notch the lower front of the seat so I can shift gears, and, second, I’ll need to modify the seat backs to accept headrests (since I’m adding shoulder harnesses, the headrests are needed for safety.) I’ll still take the seats in to be recovered (along with the door cards) but I plan on doing everything else: headliner, carpets, wind lace…so stay tuned.

Test fitting. That vinyl is a bit stiff. (Careful observers will note the ceiling has been insulated.)