Improving radio reception

I noticed in my Honda I have trouble picking up distant radio stations. Both with the Clarion deck that came with it and also with the new Pioneer I just got. Actually the pioneer is no better than the clarion was at radio. Even my moms old 82 toyota stock radio picks up radio from a city 50 miles away most of the time (a bit fuzzy but still good enough to listen to) and it's analogue. Any tricks for improving radio reception from distant sources? I already verified the antennae works a little bit since raising it and touching it makes a difference in reception on the stations that do come in. I guess I could always get XM.

make sure ur radio antenna is plugged into the back of ur headunit....... i know it sounds stupid but mine did the same thing and it wasnt plugged in.......

Yeah I checked that out, as far as I can tell it was plugged in. Someone had stuck an extension on it before since it's a bitch to plug in without one and I thought that was screwing it up, so I took off the extension and still no change. It picks up local stuff crystal clear, all 4 country stations, 2 news stations and 3 spansh stations, can you figure out why i really want those long range stations to come in?

Phuck it... just get XM! :devil:

I have a hard time w/ some signals too but, I'm in the city where there's tons of things reducing the reception. (There's this one urban station that's clear as day when I'm near downtown but, as soon I get home, it's just mixed signals. :mad: ) I can't do anythng to fix it.

What's a guy gotta do...

have you check the antenna itself? maybe it might be dead or something. :)

Is it a power antenna? I read in Popular Mechanics that if you get crappy reception, check it w/ an ohm meter. I can't remember off the top of my head what the norm is but its gotta be less than a Meg. I'll see if I can find that issue...

i had that same problem with my civic about a month ago. i could not get any stations what so ever, and everybody else got every station in the world. so i decided to just switch out the antenna. i got the antenna from autozone and spent about an hour and installed it. now i get every station, even all the ny stations. i paid $10 for it and i should have done that alot earlier.

hope that helps
l8r

Its not a power antennae, but I do kinda like the idea of switching it for a new one. I wouldn't mind XM and at only 10 or 20 bucks a month it is sure tempting, but there is one station I really like, it plays music I like about 2/3 of the time and if I could get it along with my cd collection I would be perfectly happy. I will look into getting that new antennae, you said it didn't take long to install, was there anything tricky at all about it?

Originally posted by Devedander
Its not a power antennae, but I do kinda like the idea of switching it for a new one. I wouldn't mind XM and at only 10 or 20 bucks a month it is sure tempting, but there is one station I really like, it plays music I like about 2/3 of the time and if I could get it along with my cd collection I would be perfectly happy. I will look into getting that new antennae, you said it didn't take long to install, was there anything tricky at all about it?


it took about an hour to install because i had to find where the old antenna ran under the dash. once i found that i disconnected
that section of the antenna and started from the outside. pulling out the old antenna was easy, but trying to feed the new one down there....................damn, that was the longest part of the install. then i just ran the antenna wire straight to the stereo.
that was it!
pain in the *ss, but i am glad i did it now!

good luck

That does sound like a pain as the antennae in there now is really buried. I wonder if the old tie the ends together and pull through would work in this case.

might just work that way!

what ever you decide, good luck

l8r

what about getting a FM booster? I dont know if they work, but they are cheap.