Since I am still FNG here, I don't know if this counts as a mod, a repair or a customization, so I'm going out on a limb to claim this as a unique "mod" for my rig.

Hope you enjoy reading about it as much as I enjoyed making it!

After almost a full week of ownership of "Maggy" -- (my new-to-me 2002 Sport) -- I was driving down the road and discovered she had no antenna! Oddly I never noticed this at the dealer or on the drive home. Since I haven't driven a vehicle with an antenna in many, many years, I didn't even think about it, honestly. FWIW, it does not seem to impact radio reception, since I can hear all the stations I normally do when driving. Here's the gap:





My first thought was to find a new antenna. After scouring the forum and YT videos and learning about straight-up OEM replacements, whip mods, and bullet antennas, some of which would require me to remove some dash panels, etc. all I wanted to do was make sure water/mud/ice didn't get in there and damage or rust anything. (I could not see inside and didn't want to start taking panels off at the time...)

Being a sick bastard, I tried to come up with ideas for a "plug" I could put into the antenna hole. My first thought was to just drop a 4" carriage bolt in there, but then I thought it would rattle around and irritate me. Then I thought maybe I could create a mold, pour some flex seal in it and have a custom plug. The look on my wife's face when I told her I needed some clay and flex seal to fabricate my own antenna plug basically told me there was a better way to do this.

Dedicated to finding a better way, I took the calipers out to get some dimensions. It seemed about 8.5 - 10 mm ID depending on exactly where a plug would make contact with the rim. Being a God-fearing American, I had to convert that metric to imperial and came up with something in the .35" - .40" range. That is when it hit me...I went inside, got my field jacket and pulled out an empty steel casing from a 7.62 x 39 round! For non-firearms enthusiasts, that is the round generally fired by an AK-47. I chose steel rather than brass since I feared it might fall into the void. Using steel case, I could get a magnet in there and retrieve it. I had previously lost a pencil while testing the depth of the cavity. Note it is deeper than a pencil. Happily I was able to retrieve it with another pencil and some super glue, but now I digress..

The casing fit very well into the antenna hole...long enough to (hopefully) not bounce out on the road and certainly unique looking. There was a bit of space between the casing and the chrome ring around the antenna, so I thought I would hit it with some spray-on rubber to widen it a little. After I let it dry, I put it into the hole. Damn, it looked crappy!





Never being one to give up, I remembered we had a can of leak seal in the basement I had used to patch some PVC recently. If I were to dip rather than spray, it should come out more even than I could manage with the rattle can. Also, the dip was clear, rather than white.



I set it on a paper plate to dry after the initial dipping. To increase coverage, I dipped multiple times over the next 48 hours...about 12 hours between dips. Much to my delight, the liquid rubber ran down the casing, naturally forming a gasket of sorts. This is exactly what I was hoping for.





Earlier today, I decided it was go time!

Gently prying the casing off of the paper plate so as not to damage the newly formed gasket, I stuffed it into the antenna hole. It did have some rubber sticking out of the hole, but I was able to trim that off to make it look as clean as it could.





While I'm not sure it will 100% prevent moisture from gaining entry, it should help. Worst case, I am happy with the way it looks and I honestly can't think of any vehicles in my area that have an AK shell casing sticking out of them!

Let me know what you guys think!

p.s. I am tempted to try this with different casings since it can be easily removed with a good tug. I'm sure a .308 or 8mm would work fine, but they might be a little more conspicuous.

Hmmm

I think it would like a Whole lot cooler to mount it the otherway around.

I would use a 50cal instead too but otherwise nice effort....

I didn't have a .50 handy, but I will try to pick one up. I'll have to start picking up brass and will create a collection of them. LOL