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Is poor AM receception an indicator of other car problems?

V

vibe

Why does a radio well well in a new car and then sound real crappy years later? This happened to my Ford Ranger truck after 3-4 years.
I'm looking at a 2005 Crown Vic, 36K mi, nice car but the AM part of the radio is simply terrible. Could not even get WBZ on seek from 35 mi during the day weak and stackity. Is the quality of the radio an indicator of some other problem with the car? Thanks, vibe.
 
Believe it or not, car antennas wear out and need to be replaced. If the car radio is great when you get it, and after a few years slowly grows worse, its your antenna. If you live in an area where a lot of salt is put on the roads in the winter, it only speeds up the deterioration process. Obviously AM will be the first to go. Try replacing the antenna and see if it makes an improvement. There may be other things that can be used to filter out engine noise, and I'm sure they'll be posted. I'm going after the reception angle here. Antennas are not expensive in the least and in most cases can be easily replaced by hand.
 
I too have had this problem, when the car is new the AM is great but seems to deteriorate as years go by.
I suspect some of the trash and noise eminates from failing ignition wiring, new
cars with all the electronics seem to be far worse than cars of the 60's and 70's

I remember how spectacular the AM was on my 66 Chevelle SS 396, it was the
second year that Delco offered FM stereo and the radio had those big DS-501
audio output transistors and boy did it sound great and the AM fours years later
when I traded it in was as good as the day I bought it.
The Delco AM's were just as good through the early 80's
Had a Pontiac Grand Prix with the first factory upgraded system with a Delco power amp/equalizer, anyone riding in this car was astounded by the audio fidelity,
at the time there was nothing like it.....was before Delco Bose.
 
I had a 1999 Ford Explorer where the AM got worse over time due to engine noise. The AM reception was still good when the engine was off, but you can't get down the road too far that way. ::)
 
Everything in modern design disregards AM radio principles.
The car radios in the 1960's were built like tanks with heavy steel walls providing almost perfect shielding.
Every noise making thing in the car had bypassing or shielding in steel boxes.
The coil had a suppressor condenser, the points had a condenser, the voltage regulators were in steel boxes.

The power into the radio usually had several bypass caps, smaller and larger for a wide ranges of frequency bypassing.
More expensive cars had bypassing of the voltage regulator, wiper motor, heat fan motor, instrument cluster voltage regulator,
turn signals, window motors.

Even then some people took extra measures, conductive grease or non-static spring "grounders" in the wheel bearing dust cap,
additional resistors in each spark plug line, inductors in the power lead, dragging "ground straps" (which probably do nothing to help
radio noise).

There were no oscillators or CPU clocks of any kind.
There were no vaccuum flourescent displays in the old days, no data bus.
The radio istelf had nothing like a vac flourescent display internally to make any noise.
The fuel pump was mechanical.

None of the people designing the new controls have any inking or concern that data bus noise is not shielded or
bypassed with capacitors, and what these signals do when they intermod with incoming AM radio signals.
No one will take the trouble or expense to do it right.
These people don't understand how AM works, and what's more, they DON'T CARE.

The new car radios ususally have no RF preselector circuit, one reason is in order to deaden them to all this locally generated noise.

I had a car antenna whip die recently but it was 25 years old.
Sometimes the grounding at the antenna base fails due to corrosion, and this badly detunes AM pickup or adds lots of noise.
Sometimes the body panel the antenna is on loses connection to ground, and the result is the same.
Sometimes the hood becomes ungrounded, and ignition pulse noise is then picked up.

In the 1960s Corvettes had special sheet metal covers to run the spark plug wiring under in order to keep noise off the AM.
The fiberglass hood offered no shielding.

The only way to make it any better is experimentation and troubleshooting.

I drove to work today in the 1966 Plymouth, the Bendix AM/FM factory radio still sounds great, but it's had me taking care of it
for the last 30 years. It was beginning to have some squeals due to failing bypass caps.
How in the world can you easily replace aything in these new "radio emulators"?
 
The AM reception in my 2004 Dodge Neon is just fine - no problems whatsoever other than IBOC hash (which of course has nothing to do with the car).

Why is car AM reception an afterthought in many cases? Same reason it's an afterthought in consumer home & portable radios (if it's there at all): Few are listening and it's getting fewer by the year as the old folks die off.

This is 2008, not 1958. FM started pushing AM out of the way 40 years ago. News/talk stations are moving to FM now. Once sports play-by-play moves there (it's starting now, especially with football & hockey), AM will be pretty much dead. I don't know if there are any now (every car I've ever owned had AM), but I can see the day when car radios will be FM-only or FM/satellite in the not-too-distant future.
 
That day has already arrived, Keith. Some new cars are offering ipod or satradio options instead of AM. You still get FM.
 
mimo said:
That day has already arrived, Keith. Some new cars are offering ipod or satradio options instead of AM. You still get FM.
Click to expand...

That's what I get for not buying a car in the few years. I had no idea these were already available.
 
I'm not happy about the lack of AM on some new car sound systems, but I'm sure I'm in a small minority. I also won't buy a car with a lousy AM tuner either.
 
The biggest disappointment I have had with my 2006 Hyundai Elantra is the AM radio reception. I took it back twice in the early months, but found little relief. There seems to be no supression of any interference and you constantly hear a high-pitched whine and what seems like the sounds you pick up on shortwave. This not only seems to come from the engine itself, but also when you are near overhead TV cables. If you listen to AM with the key in accessory, there seems to be no noise at all. Just turning it to "on" without even turning the motor over, causing the high-pitched whine to be heard. It's even worse when you put the transmission into reverse.
 
Cincinnati Kid said:
The biggest disappointment I have had with my 2006 Hyundai Elantra is the AM radio reception. I took it back twice in the early months, but found little relief. There seems to be no supression of any interference and you constantly hear a high-pitched whine and what seems like the sounds you pick up on shortwave. This not only seems to come from the engine itself, but also when you are near overhead TV cables. If you listen to AM with the key in accessory, there seems to be no noise at all. Just turning it to "on" without even turning the motor over, causing the high-pitched whine to be heard. It's even worse when you put the transmission into reverse.
Click to expand...

I suspect your instrument panel or something shows what gear you are in with an LED display.

Data bus clock noise, strobed LED displays, and all these other controls and indicators were NOT designed in ways to supress the
noise they inevitably create. If you have 5-10 years to experiment, you may try adding inductors, clamp-on toroids, and adding
bypass capacitors to isolate the noise, but even then, the proximity to the noise producer may mean the antenna is picking up
the noise directly by radiation from the LEDs. Is the antenna a whip or in the windshield?
A whip antenna will pick up the least noise from the car, and maybe the rear fender of the car will be quieter for AM.

Not much you can do about TV cables, except be annoyed that they, too are not really in compliance with
standards regarding leakage.

It sure isn't the same FCC anymore that I was taught about. As a younger man, I thought any such interference producers could be shut
down in distribution or manufacture until the products were in compliance.
In reality, it's anything goes.

There would seem to be a market for super-duper analog AM tuners for cars that could be plugged into the ipod jack! :)
 
Thanks everyone for your replies so far. The car is an 2005 crown vic, antenna is rear mounted and seems more condusive for FM based on it's length. The good thing is that the FM tuner and sound system is sweet, great speakers and a combo CD and cassette (damn no 8 track!). I never thought I'd buy ANY car w/ a bad AM radio but THAT seems to be the only drawback.
I might upgrade the antenna; I think that may be the problem.
 
Let us know if that turns out to be the problem. If the rest of the stereo is sweet, it's definitely a keeper, and a radio is only as go0d as it's antenna. Some of the newer models don't always come with an optimum AM antenna either. Best of luck to you.
 
thanks, will do some research on car antennas; the problem is the FM senstivity to good-VG with the exisiting antenna. Will be completing the purchase on fri.
 
I hate to sound like an "old fart" already (at 42), but I hate to see AM go the way of turntables, cassetes, and (as of 2-17-09) analog :mad: Sure as I'm sitting here, I believe AM will be pretty much gone in the not so distant future. What do you "pros" think? Another 15 or 20? Or less??

Luckily I get excellent AM in my 2003 Taurus, and respectable in my '95 Cutlass. Guess I'd better enjoy it while I can ::)
 
im by no means an everyday am listener, buy why get rid of it. i find that cars with the antenna in the glass have shitty reception.

ps, i still have a turntable..i use it all the time.
 
I used to have an old F-100 pickup and the radio always sounded better after a tune-up. New spark plugs and spark plug wires seemed to make a difference.
 
flytrap said:
I used to have an old F-100 pickup and the radio always sounded better after a tune-up. New spark plugs and spark plug wires seemed to make a difference.
Click to expand...

I think they do to0, maybe it's the better connection of a new spark plug that is like a noise filter. I've noticed a slight improvement in the cars I have driven after a tune-up.
 
You guys can still get AM????

You must not live near any electrical lines! ;D
(Around here, it seems that all the power lines are about 100 years old, and arc constantly. I guess we could use a few good hurricanes to take them out, so we can "upgrade" to new hardware.)
 
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