I have a 97 f150. The radio has always had really bad reception. Only very close fm stations would come in. I bought a alpine unit and installed it. I made sure that the antenna was plugged in. The alpine doesn't get any better reception. 3 or 4 miles from town and I lose the radio station. I unscrewed the antenna from the base and it did make it slightly worse. Any ideas what could be wrong. The antenna wire is connected to the base of the antenna.

Budman

 

Have you looked over the whole wire?
Maybe the antenna wire got cut/chewed inhalf somewhere?

 

I'll have to check that next. Is the outer wires of the coax cable grounded? If the inner wire is touching the outer wire would it change the reception? Thanks for the help.

Budman

 

The outer jacket (shield) must be grounded at the antenna base.

The inner conductor must NOT show any resistance to the outer conductor. If it does, it's not an antenna anymore.

Steve

 

Thanks for the info. Any idea how to remove the base from the fender?


Budman

 

You have to pop off that black cover first. Get a flat blade screwdriver and take your time so you dont mark it all up. Once you get that off, there are three phillips screws under there that need to come out, then you can just pull the base off the fender.

 

Thanks for the help. I'll go check it out right now.

Budman

 

I have a 97 F150 lariat. Back in April I had a new head unit installed. Back when it was installed i had great reception. My stock radio had really good reception and now the new hu is getting bad reception. what could be the problem?

 

I have the same exact problem. Installed a new hu and the reception went to crap, reinstalled the original and the reception is still crap. Reception was great up untill the new hu install.

 

I have a 1996 and since I have had my HU installed my reception has static at times. I was blaming the mountains, but my car tunes in fine.

Think FM boosters would help?