d-fer

I've gone through a few, fitted a 'workman' open coil now, on a DV style mount. Folds down when wanted or smacks anything heavy. It's quite heavy gauge stainless, but the open coil has enough give for trees and car park barriers. For 27/28mhz, sorted a nice short 'dial-a-match', which is only just a little longer than a VHF 1/4 wave. Both on the back panel each side of the door, and no problems with either. Used to run 'on glass' ones which were brilliant, but the van body and XS heated screens have ruled them out now - bit of a pity coz I could tune one for Coastguard work on marine and the other for 2/70. If it was not for the heated screen, I'd have refitted one 'on glass' and switched the feed to each radio as required.

The filters in radio sets are known to fail, the bit that does all the mixing and filtering to get the correct frequency. Typical symptoms are crackling and loss of sensitivity until it gives up all together. Try another head, if it's fine then there's your problem. By the time you have paid a techy to find the offending filter, swap it/them out you may have well bought a new head unit from your favorite ICE store. If you've confirmed both aerials are good, and have good earths and no breaks in the centre core (cheepie rubber and steel rod ones use solid centre cores which can break losing signal). With the head out, slide a long shaft screw driver carefully into the socket, it should pick up close FM stations with no problem, or with a long scrap wire bared wire, radio 4 on LW with little trouble if the head is ok.

Silicone spray, available from fabric shops. Used in sewing, super for sliding fabrics about. An old stocking for head rests provides a firm, easy over base to slide covers on.

Obviously, don't bung up the battery beather pipe! ?

Grommets and stone chip spray did it for me. For one, I didn't have a suitable one to hand, but had a suitable short bolt, nut and washer combo which sorted it. All the defenders, and others coming out of service here, with holes for relays and fuse boxes for Woodway optilink installs just get the grommets.