I lost AM reception a couple days ago. It's been real cold and the power antenna stuck so i figured that it was the problem and replaced it with a non power antenna last night.
Still no AM. The car has a cheap but brand new head unit and I had to run a new antenna cable from the head unit back to the antenna because the PO cut the plug off of the original one.
I had AM just fine but now it's totally static and noise. If I touch the antenna it comes in fairly well.
What do you think the problem could be?

 

Are you getting fm?

 

probably signal strength some how. i know i had a problem like that with my audi i had back in the day. i forget what i had to do.....i had alti whine too making the problem worse.

well, the power antennas have a tendancy to stick like that, all the crap from outside and the road is stuck to it, then it goes down into the motor part makin it hard for it to go up. i would try wd40 or something to get that gunk out. try the old power antenna after that, maybe you got another bad antenna. do you have a spare hu to try to? the hu could be bad.

also on a side note, i was in dayton on my way to indy on christmas eve, 70-75 interchange was horrible, i must have saw 35 cars from toledo to indy in the ditches covered in snow. i went probably 10 miles going 15 miles an hour because the roads were horrible, but they were the worst there.

 

Yep, I get FM just fine. It's really wierd, I even hooked the new antenna directly to the new head unit and it didn't work.
I'm gonna swap it with the Pioneer deck from the Porsche and see if it's the deck itself.

 

first off WHY are you listening to an AM station j/k but as I recall AM reception usually uses an antena made of a pice of wire wound around a ferrite core, I'm not sure what a car's AM reception comes through, but I know this is how it works on most home radios, my guess would be the head unit

 

Dood, haven't you ever heard of Jim Rome?

Maybe the HU has a problem. Good idea swapping in something else. That is strange, though. I don't think I have ever owned a radio in a car or house that the AM didn't work.

 

well, I pretty exclusivly use my CD player, cause I really don't like about 70% of what is on the radio :-/

 

heck i rarely listen to anything but the radio.
on my old cherokee I had a beautiful pioneer stereo in it , until it was stolen.
of course the thief thought they were getting a nice in dash CD stereo. the joke was on them. the CD portion of the radio was removed, all it had was a tuner

 

actually plug in the antenna to the deck.

serious... it's not plugged in all the way. mine did this and i jiggled the connector in more... wah-lah... perfect am reception

 

funny how i never got a single reply when i had the same problem..thanks guys. i bet your bose stereo initially had a changer hooked up to it. there's an antenna lead that loops through the changer control unit. connect those and your am stations will return. that's what the problem was with mine. basically, you're not getting reception because your anteanna simply isn't connected to the deck even though it seems it is.

 

There's nothing left of the Bose system. It's all aftermarket and it all worked fine. The AM just stopped.
I did plug the new antenna directly into the deck and it is in all the way.
I'm gonna try the other deck tonight. I'll post back with the results.


BTW, I do listen to the AM a lot for news, sports, traffic, etc.

 

I swapped head units and that solved the problem.
The bad head unit was only a couple weeks old. I guess that's what I get for buying cheap junk from Pep Boys. It was a $40 am/fm/cd.
I guess I'll keep the Pioneer in the Maxima and get a new unit for the Porsche.

 

don't forget to return the defective unit