No matter what station i try to listen to i cant get any reception. Do antenna's go bad? I know everything behing my headunit is hooked up. The problem has gotten worse and worse. And it has done it with a few differentheadunits.

 

Do you have the antenna adapter for hookup?

It's a semi stupid question, but you could use the stock plug and it might work until it falls out.

Take the HU out, check continuity to the antenna and the shielding to ground.

Get the adapter if you don't have it, GM plugs a a little smaller and the ground needs to be connected too.

That's all I can think of.

 

Burnt and shorted plug wires will play havoc with radio reception.
Quick test how is it with the engine not running???

 

It does not get reception with the car off. And i put the adapter in when i did the stereo and it is all hooked up i made sure everything was pluged in tight. Even when i first got the car 6 years ago the reception sucked witht he stock stereo.

 

Antennas don’t really go bad, not these anyway. But you will sometime find that the center conductor will open. Also, the grounds are vary important. It vary common to find corrosion at the base of the antenna where it grounds to the body.

 

This happened to my sister's radio... I forget the name of the deck, it was a foreign name that I didn't know made radios (like Toshiba- it was odd)- and one day it just got static for the radio stations. The CD player worked fine, but AM & FM were static. I tried an extra antenna I had lying around, still didn't work. Something happened with the tuner circuit- I called a radio repair shop, and they told me that it'd be cheaper to get a new radio- so that's what she did. This was 4 or 5 years ago...

 

You aint kidding when you say static.
My cd burner went out on my computer (RIGHT when i chunked all my old MP3 CDs in the trash, to make new ones), so I have been listening to the radio lately.

Ha whatever, iv been TRYING to listen to it.

I can pick up stations, but ONLY if I am within at least ONE MILE of the damn radio tower. Im not even joking.

And this joker of a city I am living in now is about two miles wide, but has like 4 radio stations... and they are all... you guessed it... COUNTRY.

So I got home all pissed off one day having to listen to the oak ridge boys and said "F THIS, IM FINDING OUT WHY RIGHT NOW" so i took my sh`t apart and everything was hooked up perfectly, just as i originally did. The antenna, no bad grounds, all was good. I cant figure out why. I then walked over to my truck, checked out the radio, and I could pick up stations all the way to dallas (all the good non-red neck ones). So I dunno.

 

Hope an answer to this thread comes along... I'm having the same trouble right now, did a search, and got mostly the same answers.
My local sound shop said the same thing about the Tuner being out, in the HU, but I don't know if I buy that, it was a used unit, however.
It seems that I haven't had decent reception in a while either... I don't know, cause I have been working on different aspects of my system for 2 years.
The only thing I haven't tried is to replace the antenna base, (You know how it has that bracket that is behind the fender?/P.I.T.A.!!!)
I really didn't want to invest in a new HU...

 

One wierd thing - when I turn my cell phone off, the reception gets better after a few seconds.