Expert: Peter G. Lee - 7/26/2006

Question
Hello Peter,

For about the last 6 months I have been getting very poor reception in my 1999 Oldsmobile Cutlass. When I first got my JVC deck over a year ago, my radio stations came in clear as a bell. But a couple of months later I noticed that when I did the auto seek on my deck, it would only pick up one station! Now I live in the Minneapolis, MN area and this is extremely odd. To get a station I have to manually dial it in and even then my reception is spotty at best. After dealing with this for a couple of months I took my car to Best Buy and had them look at it. They said that the tuner must be bad and replaced it with a new JVC deck. The same problem exists! I have checked both the connections on the back of my deck and at the antenna. I don't know what to do next... Please help...

Thanks!
Tyler Sahnow

Answer
If I was on the spot I think it would be a couple of minuets to put my finger on it but, I'm not, so I will have to best guess.
Seems Best Buy were wrong and a new headset didn't help. I don't think it is the head unit or that you have had a dumb moment and put the radio on "local", highly ulikely on two sets.
As most ariels are little more than a metal stick unless stubby or bee sting powered (amplified)type and as you have replaced the head unit without curing it, it must be that the ariel is a powered one and you have lost power to it, the output from the head unit should be a blue or blue/white wire chech to see if you have three live wires when on,(live, ignition and 12v out). check yo see if you have a thin wire at the antenne as well as the main coaxial or an inline preamp and if so is it live when the radio is on.