I just bought a Dodge Caravan with a Pioneer DEH-P2000 radio/CD player. When listening to AM radio and driving near HV powerlines, the received signal is significantly distorted. The sound "warbles", and is very unpleasant, and sometimes hard to understand voices. It happens a lot driving around town.
I've never experienced this before with other cars or radios. Can anyone suggest anything I can do to solve the problem, other than the obvious "replace it"?
suggest
Hello Bob:
You can't have your cake and eat it too...
Get this replaced while you still have your warranty in effect.
Warm regards,
Pete
-- 1PW @?6A62?FEH9:DE=6o2@=]4@> [r4o7t]
Unfortunately, I bought it used, and the warrantee is long gone, I'm sure.
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It sounds like the signal getting into the radio is the problem. If too strong a signal is received, it will overload the front end of the radio. The strong signal can be coming from total noise picked up which does go up in the vicinity of pwer lines. Or, it could also be a poor connection between the antenna and the input to the radio. If you can get at the back of the radio, you could hook up an alternate antenna and see what happens. The biggest problem wiill be to get the radio out of the mounting it is in. Then you can hook up a clip lead for an antenna and see what is going..
I guess it's time to figure out how to get access to the radio. Anyone dealt with this on an old (94) Caravan or one of the related vans?
Bob F.
I have the original Chrysler AM/FM/Cassette (no CD player) from that vintage van. Let me know if you'd like it since I have no current use for it and I would not mind getting it off my work bench. :)
No guarantees that the AM on this one won't get overloaded when you go under a HV power line...
Bob S
All Chrysleer radios are easy to get out. After you gently pry off the bezel, there are two screws in the front, with hex heads, One on the right side and one the bottom left.
Take them out and the radio pulls out, but one wire or another will keep it from coming out very far.
My '95 Chrysler LeBaron came with some wierdo cheap-looking after market radio but I had the radio from the '88 I scrapped and it doesn't react any worse to power lines than any radio I have had. Every car I or my friend has had stops receiption on AM, when going by either of two radio transmitters in the area, but only for a few seconds. Other than that, I guess I don't spend much time near high tension lines. I know I went under them twice on Sunday and didn't hear a thing in my car radio. But it was probalby on FM.
If you install a Chrysler radio, you have to plug in the antenna, the grey connector, the black connector, and don't forget the ground strap, braided metal in the 4 Chryslers I've dealt with. Without that reception can be terrible. A friend had a car with terrible sound, and it took me a while to notice that the ground strap was totally missing. I replaced it with a heavy wire.
Did the wire have to be heavy?? The ground strap was very very heavy, a centimeter wide and 2 or 3 millimeters thick. Why was that? Doesn't it carry only a teeny bit of current at the most?
I think there's a separate ground wire in one of the multi-wire connectors, but even if it is the entire ground, why does it have to be so heavy?
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