Hi people, I'm finally fed up with my car's radio system in general. So starting from the top, I need to figure out what's up with it's antenna. Driving along the M4, where my brother's car will hold kiss fm from london then switch to the bristol transmission (just using kiss as an example!) mine would lose it by J8/9. In town it's OK as there are lots of strong signals, but no where near as many as other cars seem to pick up. On the motorway it's reaaally annoying, sometimes it gets no signals! So, I've checked the leads, everything's plugged in OK. It was my dad's car and came with no radio so he got halfords to put one in about 8 years ago I think, but all he cared about was playing his Leonard Cohen CDs not broadcasts. Head unit is a JVC KD S621, then ~1m coax cable behind dash, through bulkhead, then to antenna. Antenna is ~40cm long, rubber thing that can be flexed loads (metal one got bent ). Crucially, the antenna is mounted on the drivers side wing, in front of the right windscreen pillar. IE below the roof, and right next to the engine (although it is a diesel). Reception performance massively decreases if I plug dodgy phone chargers etc into the cig lighter sockets (mounted away from the head unit now, still interferes), or put the main beams on. tl;dr: So I've been having a look around, there's either way too much info/choice or not enough reviews. I need to find an antenna that: - Bolts into a roof (aluminium roof) OR bolts onto a roof gutter - I already have some holes in the roof taped over. - Can be flexed a lot - my max roof height is 1.95m, and the antenna will be mounted about 10cm below this as the roof slants down at the front, so it has to stick above the max roofline yet be squashed as I go into covered carparks! - Has a really shielded cable, preferably ~1.5m long. Sorry long message, I'm just trying to find a nice long term solution! Many thanks guys
Sorry it's a Land Rover Defender. It's the original placement position of the antenna, but the original aerial was a really long extendable type, but was pretty dire too!
Hmm... Well after a bit of googling it seems the old style of huuge aerials has gone, so it'll be difficult to find something fitting. Try having a look at the earths as suggested here. The other suggestion that's cropped up is fitting a chequer-plate reinforcement on the wing for reception.
After reading I initially thought about how not all tuners were created equally, then turned my attention to the coax and interference, quick search led to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_cable#Interference_and_troubleshooting. I thought that there's different qualities of insulation offered by coax, and on that page an audio/tv shop has edited it to say that the cables deteriorate . I always suggest start with the simple and cheap solutions first.
In fairness they are right - maybe not on the timescales they'd like their customers to believe, but there will be an inevitable deterioration of the materials within a coax. I think, in this case, it's either that the radio unit itself is giving up the ghost or a dodgy earth is beginning to show its head, especially since the headlights etc show up as clear interference.
Coax cable can be a nightmare for carrying water through it too which is a distinct possibility on an old Landy.
It is looking like an earth connection eh? Damn that's gonna be a painful, knuckle scraping one. The coax runs right along with all the other wiring passing through the bulk head behind the dash...hence hoping that a roof one could avoid this. In an ideal situation I wanted to mount the whole lot, radio and all, away from the dash to be more "traditional" so this could be a neat catalyst Silly uni getting in the way of my time! Where on earth does the earth on a car have to go? On say a radio sat on your kitchen table, there is no earth, it has a plastic body and 2 pin mains plug, yet still picks up plenty of stations?
On a car the earth points are scattered around the chassis, it's used to connect everything to the battery (essentially) and simplify wiring considerably. Pick up the Haynes manual for it if you're not confident and have a look for this earth point behind the headlights (one on each side) and give it a clean up with some WD40/brake cleaner/sand paper as needed. That should hopefully sort it out for you. [edit] Forget the Haynes, check these badboys out!
It's just my cynicism shining through. The earth shouldn't be too bad, if the battery has a wire connected to the chassis (I think this is done more indirectly now) you can attach the earth to (the contiguous) bear metal. And I think a car needs grounds because if anything shorts and you touch some metal, well... zap. That's a mighty fine link, even includes how to replace the crankshaft bearings! Oh, and some car motors really mess up my terrestrial tv signal, so there can be allot of interference inside the Faraday cage, the coax shield is meant to isolate the aerial from this, but needs to be earthed.
As jester said, the whole chassis should be earthed sufficiently for an aerial connection. Lots of older cars will have a heavy wire directly between the chassis and the -ve battery terminal. (that pics from my car, but its not an original part) There may be danger of an earth loop, but I think that's only if you're passing high currents through, and don't really know enough about that to comment anyway... That is one hell of a link Krikket. Wish i had something like that for my car - makes the haynes manual look lacking ps, jester - is your tag-line meant to read 'grumpy old git'?
yeah good grounding is really important.. I used to run an in line am/fm amplifier.. was really cheap to buy too and did the job (used to commute long distances every day) hooks up behind the deck- link on jc whitney http://www.jcwhitney.com/am/fm-radio-antenna-booster/p2001196.jcwx
It's giving me dirty thoughts of buying up a couple of diffs and transfer boxes to rebuild for practice!
Oo-ur, yer! I like to bring the way I speak to to my writing, like av'tar . In any event thats the words I an' others use. Plus the 'unsurity' of how oppressive the family nature might be. Practice? sounds like the beginnings of a Dragons Den business! - you know after you've done and sold three it would be worth 600K. But seriously for me messing around with spanners is a chore, that's why I'm not an engineer anymore - too much hard graft, had to get an office job . More recently been helping my brother with his two wheeled race contraption, nothing too strenuous though. I couldn't imagine getting greasy for practice, well at least you should be able to sell them on right
It's just a hobby for me really, it started by not wanting to pay for simple work on my car anymore, and has gradually evolved into an obsession. One thing I haven't done is dismantle a gearbox yet, and having a step-by-step manual looks like a good start.
Ah wow awesome link thanks! I've never seen that before. Got all the manuals for my car and can spend time fiddling once the current jobs are out the way lol. I think the earth thing is pretty car wide so it needs a methodical checking over, the fuel gauge can be a bit jerky sometimes!
Sounds like you need to have a wander round with a can of brake cleaner, WD40 and some sandpaper and clean it all up.
