Car Radio Reception Problems Poor Signal

When he had the truck painted He had seen the Scheib commercials on CATV from Chicago, 175 miles away from us in Indiana.  He drove it up there, had it painted, came back, then it rained.  That paint job crackled up like the mud of a stream bed.  He drove back up and had them fix it.  After a fashion.

Painting the car started out at $39.99 then $49.99 then $99.95 then $149.99.

Then There was Cal Worthington with his dog named "Spot" only it was a Lion. Then If you see me personally to buy a car "I will Eat A Bug" (of course he could never be found, and the State took the misrepresenter revoking His Company businesses.)

I liked that style of econoline.  My stepbrother had a van soaked in liquid strawberry incense.  His dad had a pickup with a Earl Scheib red paint job.

In 1962 my dad bought a new Ford Econoline. It had no radio and I was surprised when He asked me if I had a radio he could install. Sure boosted my ego that my dad thought enough about my knowledge of radios (which was almost non existent at that time   ). I don't remember the brand name of the radio but it was a 6 volt. I went down to PeP Boys and got a Voltadrop ceramic resistor. Boy did it get hot when the radio was playing. The first time we played the radio was nothing but ignition noise, so I installed a capacitor on the firewall that was wired to the power lead. It worked! However when we went on trips across country and there were no close stations, especially at night the static was louder than the radio stations. I mounted a speaker under the dashboard with plumbers tape, the same as the radio. HA! it sounded like a speaker that was very Tinny.

I had quite a collection of car radios from the back ally of a car radio repair shop a block away. They would toss out the old ones when they replaced them with the newer high-breds and full transistor ones. they had a lot of them in a pile for the trash pickup. I was 18 and just getting ready to graduate from High School. I had taken an after hours class for building a one tube radio in the industrial workshop building on campus. Of course I tried building a crystal radio with the old razor blade pencil lead from a cubscout book. I never did get it to play

I imagine the first radio restoration I had a hand in was my platoon sergeants' radio for his old '49 Chevrolet.  That poor old thing had seat covers like the model A in Dark Passage.  It had a brushed on off-olive drab paint job (he put in some yellow to make it look like it hadn't been purloined).  We took the radio out and worked on it after hours for a week and had it up and pulling in WLS from Ft. Riley KS. That thing worked as well as the six he rebuilt for the car.  When a few of us were riding along, he'd turn it on and we'd all go HMMMM as it warmed up.  I nicknamed the old unit the war wagon.

Yes, with these digital receivers, the antenna trimmer is just a pleasant memory.

Another area of poor reception is the trimmer cap in the back of old radios. It was usually located in a hole next to the antenna plug.

I have owned a few Fords that were very particular about having all the grounds firmly in place.  One had 3 and only after all 3 were cleanly connected to the body did it receive well.  I currently have a Ford with an AM reception problem that has existed from when i acquired it.  It has a remote locking system that appears to be inline on the antenna coax and the AM is particularly weak.  The FM is strong, though.  Usually when there is a problem the opposite is usually the case.

Frank, I remember that Bondo issue and antennas with cars that belonged to a couple of friends of mine way back.

On a somewhat related but non radio issue, one of those friends, after doing the body patching,  thought he could insure his vehicle inspection by cramming a couple of packages of steel wool up the tailpipe and into the muffler with a broom handle to quiet it down enough to pass. It worked, for about a minute or so till he revved the engine a bit. A couple of dull thump sounds and some steel wool flying out of the tailpipe, and resulting in a slightly louder muffler. We got a good laugh outta that one.

Over the decades, I have had hundreds of car radios come across the service bench. a number of complaints were were: Poor reception.

They worked just fine on the bench, but not in the car.

 The frustrating ones were "No problem found (NPF)" types with poor reception in the car.
 (On my bench I used a car radio antenna for testing. NEVER use a longwire antenna for this. The gain factor for the longwire can overload the front end of the radio and cause major distortion.)

So when I found a "NPF" radio with poor reception in the vehicle, I, or the customer, would reinstall the radio and check it again.

 Poor reception called for me to use a test antenna (Just a known good car radio antenna). If it worked fine with the test antenna and poorly with the car antenna, I would check to make sure the original antenna was grounded to the car body properly. Most antennas had "dogs" that would dig through the undercoating and paint to make contact with the fender metal. Sometimes excessive road vibration could loosen the mounting screw.

Sometimes just pulling the antenna and reaching in with sandpaper   and re-cleaning the mounting surface inside the fender would solve the problem. (And with gloves on. For some odd reason customers didn't appreciate blood from sharp metal cut fingers on their cars. Hmmm.. Wonder why )
 If not, a new antenna was needed. 

 Be aware that sometimes after a wreck people would Bondo (tm) the snot out of the inside and outside of the fender where the antenna mounted at, causing a poor or missing ground. I got caught on that once. 

In days past, the antenna lead in would screw to the base of the antenna and when the coax from the antenna to the radio went bad, a cheap cable would fix the problem. Those days are sadly long gone.
 Now you are forced to replace the entire antenna, and on cars with the antenna built into the windshield, it was necessary to replace the windshield to replace a bad antenna or install a fender mounted antenna instead. I did a lot of fender mounted antennas, as it was way cheaper than a new windshield.