am/fm car antenna?

madmax

I replaced the stock head unit in my xb and the radio reception sucks. Stuck a piece of a coat hanger in the connector and it picked up like a champ. Either I damaged the car antenna cable, pulled it loose or whatever and don't want to mess with it. It is one of those glass mounted things, probably not much good anyway. Any suggestions for an antenna I could mount on the vehicle that would look good? Can't seem to find much info...

Thanks!
madmax

MacLeod

Run down to Autozone and pick one up.

I put one on my Suzuki Samurai I owned about 10 years ago. However, I dont know how big of a chore it would be to mount one on there. Running the wire was pretty straight forward in the Samurai. It may be a major ordeal in your Xb.

pentavolvo

You said the antenna is built into the windshield, which means it most likely is amplified meaning a signal needs to be sent to the antenna to power up, is the power antenna wire in your harness hooked up. Also check out scionlife or scioncaraudio forums they know there stuff

Jstas

The wire-in-the-windshield antennas are notorious for having spotty reception at best. They have admittedly gotten better over the years but they are still not nearly as good as the aerial kind of antenna.

However, if it is amplified and you don't have any power going to it, your antenna will only be as long as the distance from your radio to the ground point where than amplifier is grounded. If that is shorter than the typical 2-3 feet needed for FM signal reception then you will get poor reception.

madmax

pentavolvo wrote:

it most likely is amplified meaning a signal needs to be sent to the antenna to power up

This is quite helpful! I never thought of it being amplified. I did not hook up any power connections for the antenna. I thought it was quite odd the original unit had reasonable reception while this one did in my other vehicle but not this one.
Thanks!
madmax

dorokusai

My Audi(2003) has an in-glass antenna and it's rock solid. I wish they were more common. Everytime I do radio work I wonder why they don't make the antenna cable 2 inches longer.

PoweredByDodge

costs money -- that's all impedance matched cable. i'm not saying its expensive (because it's not) but it certainly costs significantly more than 2 inches of plain old 20 awg. ... save 12 cents on 50,000 cars and you just got yourself a six sigma green belt project for 6 grand and probably saved your job.

Libertyc

Everytime I do radio work I wonder why they don't make the antenna cable 2 inches longer.

I hear you on that. I can't even remember how many car audio systems I installed and the antenna cable was always almost too short.