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In our previous post on the Harada Antenna <- tap highlighted text to see] we talked about being able to score the cable but the base was a round base.  The good news from that was we can use the rectangle base from the car. This is a perfect example of having to get creative to get the right pieces on a budget for this car.  We talked about some of the challenges of restoring Fox Saleens in this video. Tap to watch it as we have some personal education, if you want to call it that, from restoring Fox Saleens.

The challenge with the Harada antenna is that finding an original kit would cost a large fortune for what the part is. We talk about this in the video above saying this is a “Saleen Tax” because the original part used by Saleen was a mere $20 part you could pick up at any Harada dealer from that era. 

The antenna we got with the kit had a “square tip” at the top.  The Saleen’s would have had a round ball tip to emulate the Ford OE antenna.  We turned to eBay thanks to our buddy Rick and bought what looked like a round tip mast replacement. 

The small gallery pic and pic of the product on eBay looked to be round.  So for $15 we purchased it.  It’s worth the gamble at that price. But, when it arrived the tip wasn’t round. It was a teardrop shape. 

In further conversation with Rick, he noted that the kits from the era in which Saleen used these would have come with either a round tip or the teardrop tip.  So this could be presented as correct.  However, most of the cars that we know of that have these antennas have the ball round tip at the end. 

We contacted the seller as they had several listings and different models of antenna masts for sale to see if they had a round tip replacement.  They did not.  All they had was the teardrop tip. 

While we know, and now you know from reading this, that this may not be 100% correct, it is accurate from the time period. So we’re going to roll with this for the time being and if we come across a round tip mast in our daily Saleen adventures we’ll purchase it if it is a good deal. 

We do know of a couple of friends who have the round tip masts in their “stash” but we’ll try to find one on our own out in the wild.  We don’t want to take away from peoples personal stash of parts awaiting cars they plan to purchase or restore.