So I fired up the radio and tuned in a local station.
What I got back was....well, not good. At least 95% static. And thats with the engine OFF......so I’m pretty sure it’s a connection issue somewhere.
Some PO had stuck an amplified antenna on the front wondow, and now I know why. Crap reception from the oem antenna. I ripped that out several days ago. Just dead weight as far as I’m currently concerned. Not to mention, I hate it when electrical is not clean, tidy and only as much as needed to serve its intended purpose.
Now, I’m pretty familiar with radio theory and I’m well aware of the limitations of an antenna on a fiberglass body. Not enough steel to form a ground plane so it has to try and use the actual ground surface under the car. Although a good dipole antenna system affects AM more than FM, it’s still not great for FM either.
But I’ve been in C4’s that got perfectly acceptable reception, so I was pretty sure something was “off” in my 88. Wouldnt be a big surprise considering how many other electrical bodges I’ve already fixed all over the car.
First off is the obvious things. So I check the rear antenna. I pull the lh wheel off and then pull the inner liner. I look up at the antenna unit and:
[ATTACH=full]30095[/ATTACH]
AH-HA!
Someone has had thier “buck-shee” mitts in here too. If you look close to the top of the unit, you see two “ears” on the housing. On one side, you see a wire. This is to try and tie the ground side of the antenna to the ground on the chassis to improve reception.
But....if you look at the other “ear”, you can see shiny threads in the hole and the faint outline of another ring terminal connector. Thats also a ground to help tie the antenna to the chassis.
Time to dig around to see if that wire is still in there, just hanging loose.
If it is, I’ll clean it all up, give it a coat of electrical grease and reinstall. The other ground will get the same treatment, on both ends of the wire.
If the wire is gone, I’ll pull out the service manual volume with the wiring diagrams (its a seperate book for the 88 Vette), chase it down to where it should be and replace it.
Lets see if that makes any improvement.
Ah, 30 year old car, atlantic canada weather. Grounds, grounds, grounds. Looks like I’ll have to go around the whole car and make sure they’re all good. Bad grounds can get you chasing your tail be causing so many strange problems. Might as well just bite the bullet and clean them all up now to eliminate those concerns.
Stand by for more...