Oh yeah, I also did not fancy the chances of the arial as it was broken away by about 95% of its circumference after some clever person decided to bend it to 90 degrees!!
SO I snapped it off at its maximum extension and modified the remaining stump to take a modern bee-sting type arial. I did not fancy removing the whole wing gaurd just for an arial so came up with an ingenious plan...
Flared back the twisted arial shell to make a flower type opening. Then cut back a M6 bolt of 40mm length to suit the plastic bee-sting arial mounting, leaving just a trimmed thread section with no head. Then the lower half of the thread was ground back on my bench grinder leaving just the root part of the threads and leaving around a 4.5mm diameter. This smaller diameter section is then forced into the remaining arial sleeve to leave about 15mm of exposed M6 thread. You just then crew on the new arial and hey presto, good as new! Also for car washes or dodgy areas etc, you can just unscrew the arial and keep it in the car.
I willpost some pics up later for better clarification.
CheeRS
Dave...
