Jargon

I took my 1998 XJ through the car wash, which I never do, but was feeling lazy. Of course, the one time I do, the machine breaks my antenna.

As soon as I saw the antenna get damaged while in the wash, my stereo died. The antenna feedthru broke and the antenna fell down into the front quarter panel.





For the stereo, I suspect that the water flooding the quarter panel when the antenna broke may have killed the stereo. Although I'm not sure how. My question is, is this possible? The stereo doesn't come on at all.
I checked that it is indeed getting the constant 12V (for memory) as well as the "on" 12V when the ignition is switched on. This is why I suspect the entire unit is dead. I didn't see any water down by the fuse box under the glove box, so I'm not sure what could have shorted due to the water.





I suspect I could just install another stereo and see what happens, but I don't have one at the moment and don't want to buy one unless needed, so was hoping for some insight/thoughts.

1. Do I need to remove the front panel to access/fix the antenna?

2. Could water flooding the feedthru killed my stereo?

Thanks in advance!

MoparNJeep

Did you check the fuse for the stereo?

TempBlueRidgeMark

There's another possibility that you should look for:

It might be that your stereo was not properly installed, and did not have an adequate ground (or any ground) so it was getting its ground through the antenna cable. When that came out, you lost the ground, so the stereo is dead.

Jargon

Okay, thank you so much. This is the problem! When I pull the antenna up so that the base of the antenna makes contact with the body, the stereo turns on. Other than the antenna, there is no grounding on the stereo anywhere! Which also make sense because when I unplug the antenna, the stereo doesn't come on either.

Thanks again all!

TempBlueRidgeMark

There ya go. I've seen it before. A garbage installation.

Now run yourself a good ground and you will be back in business.

staybroke

good call sir.

TempBlueRidgeMark

Thanks. I've seen it before. I used to install car phones for a living. I saw a lot of garbage work, including some in high-end cars.