I have an aftermarket Sony Xplod in my 05 Ram 4x4. FM works fine but strangely my AM stations barely come in. That is until I turn my headlights on and then they tune in. I was thinking of re-doing the radio ground. Before I did I thought I'd post to see if anyone else experienced this before. I can't recall whether the factory radio did the same or not. Thanks for reading.

If no one has I'll redo the ground and post back the results.

 

This actually happens with a lot of Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep vehicles... I used to have customers come back in and say "why doesn't my AM radio work now?"

Basically your OEM radio is designed to work with your OEM Antenna, there is a whole bunch of technical words and explanations, but its basically because the aftermarket world is designed to be the best universal fit for quality and functions... so as a result many cars see a reduced AM radio signal. They also have smaller tuning spools so you get a little lower quality signal.

The aftermarket antenna adapters don't help much either.

The radio grounding may help a bit, as does an aftermarket 0 or 2 AWG grounding kit, but you're still going to see that problem.

To be honest it always seemed to be more apparent in Sony, JVC, Jensen, And Clarion (Same as Jensen) stereos...

 

Any idea why my FM stations come in fine until I turn on my truck? AM works fine all the time. Some stations (FM) that used to come in no longer do. I had the stock AM/FM CD not have the Nav RB1... same issue.
Tried grounding radio chassis to truck frame, redid all ground straps on truck and replaced the antenna w/ another stock unit. Only piece not replaced is the adapter cable that goes from antenna cable to radio.

 

That makes total sense Izero. Let's face it that there is a reason that these Xplods, Jensens, etc are only $60 for the head unit. I found the same thing with a Memorex (or something as cheap) under cabinet radio. AM stations wouldn't tune to save my life. I returned it and bought a Sony that cost at least twice as much and stations came in fine. So it must be the spool size.

As far as the FM station problem you're having brandofamily I had a similar problem. Doesn't sound like this is your issue but mine was when I installed an aftermarket in my old 96' Ram and couldn't get any FM signals. Reason was the diagram said the ORANGE wire was for POWERED ANTENNA's. I assumed this to mean an antenna that went up and down when you turned the radio on. I was obviously wrong as it was the signal power. Once I got power to that wire FM stations came in perfect.

Only other thing I can think would help is to get a new antenna wire from the head unit to the actual antenna and plug that in. Might be the wire is corroded/loose/spliced.

 

There can be a few reasons for this.

The most common reason is that you are hearing Engine Noise (from the Alternator) if you hook up a multimeter to the electrical system in your truck you will notice that the voltage will fluctuate between 12.5-15.3VDC, that fluctuation causes "noise" which sounds like static.

There are some way to help eliminate that but they don't always work for every vehicle. You can get some noise filters for the antenna wire, but the downside is they degrade the actual signal a bit sometimes as they tend to filter out some lower and higher frequencies. Another way is to go with a high end radio that has noise cancellation built-in to it. Most of the Pioneer, Kenwood, Alpine, and Eclipse stereos will have that.

Another reason that this happens is because you have a digital antenna (don't think Dodge uses these), and basically what it is, is an antenna that has a 12VDC powered amplifier built-in, and some of the aftermarket harnesses don't use that wire, so you would need to splice in 12V ignition switched power to it.

There is also a very interesting effect that involves digital antennas and window tint. Less Expensive window tint actually has metals in it that give it some rigidity as well as assist in the actual "tint" color and darkness. So when you use that less expensive tint, you are actually creating something called a "Faraday Cage". The Faraday Cage is actually a device that "blocks" static and non-static electric fields/waves from entering as well as exiting the cage. (Google some videos on it, it's really cool) And as we all know radio waves are basically electronic fields/waves, so they end up getting blocked by the window tint. I have experienced this in 2004-2007 Subaru's due to their digital antennas, and in some other vehicles as well.

Now for your particular application the Nav RB1 unit... that unit actually is a factory unit that has noise cancellation, but I am assuming that it might not be getting enough power.

In our trucks (I've verified it in mine and a few others over the years) that when you tap into the ignition switched accessory power outlet to power a GPS/Radar Detector/Etc. the AM/FM reception actually suffers. If I have my radar detector powered on, I'll get some static here and there, but it goes away immediately when I turn it off.

The way you can eliminate noise/static caused by that is to run a larger ground wire (16-18 AWG) to the chassis and make it no longer than 18", if you share the ground on the outlet you will get some back feed into the electrical system that the radio doesn't like.

What I've seen some people also do is put a diode on the radio ground to prevent any current from tracking back into the radio.

Another very common cause of static is aftermarket antennas, or mismatched antennas. A lot of people don't like the look of OEM antennas, so they opt for more stylish ones, well little do they know that the length of the antenna is actually engineered to work in conjunction with the vehicle and is always at nearly the perfect height above the highest point on the vehicle.

Now the best AM/FM digital antenna that I have ever personally used is this:

http://www.dakotadigital.com/index.c...105/prd105.htm

and the best non-amplified antenna I've ever used is this:

http://www.godarusa.com/id83.html

I can't promise it will work for you as well as it did for me, but it's a definite possibility. I hope this info helps.

 

Damn! People still use AM?

 

The ground didn't help one bit. Definitely the cheap Sony Xplod. So if you listen to AM radio don't buy a cheap head unit. The am coil inside the unit is one of the ways they keep the price down.