I just took out an NOS G-body power antenna out of the box. Build date for the antenna portion was March 31, 1990. Motor assembly was built April 12, 1990. It's only 33 years old.
My goal was to put a metal antenna cable in it BEFORE I ever used it. A bolt in and go deal. I got a cable from
88hurstolds (Mike M.) and went to take the old one apart.
I took some pics coming apart and will likely do a little writeup on how to do it soon.
I sh*t you not. I popped the cover off of the motor/cable components and I lifted the antenna/cable/reel gear out as a unit and the cable fell apart in 3 places. W....T....F....There is no way that antenna would have worked having gone through the trouble to install a new Olds G47 antenna. Talk about being ultra-pizzed off. This is one of the reasons I tell everyone to plug in the antenna and operate it BEFORE you stick it in the fender to ensure it's going to work.
So yeah, spend a bunch of money on an NOS antenna if you want, but if you don't get some sort of metal cable for it, you're going to run the risk of the nylon cable snapping at the most inconvenient time.
Just tossing that out there.