John,
Thanks for the posting. I find it both hilarious and disgusting that a
high end car has such a crummy antenna. Obviously, the techies lost the
battle with the aesthetics group on that one.
One thing I noticed is the age of the car, now approaching 10 years.
Having owned a vehicle some years back for about 14 years, I can tell you
that measures I took to suppress RFI from the ignition system failed after
several years on the vehicle. A particularly subtle failure is when (if)
braid was used to bond body parts and/or ignition or exhaust parts for
purposes of RFI supression. You might need to get under the car and look
for areas that may have bene bonded but which are now floating. Good luck.
73, Dale
WA9ENA
W0UN -- John
Brosnahan
<shr@swtexas.net> To
Sent by: rfi@contesting.com
rfi-bounces@conte cc
sting.com
Subject
[RFI] 1996 Lincoln Town Car
12/07/2005 08:11
AM
Hi--
Just wonder if there are any known issues about RFI problems on
AM radio with the Lincoln. And if there is a site with some
Lincoln-specific
info for solving RFI issues.
My uncle has a Town Car and AM radio is almost completely wiped out
in areas where other vehicles have no problems. And with the ignition
OFF the Lincoln does just fine on AM.
There appear to be two issues. The weaker one is engine speed related
and is probably alternator whine although it sounds somewhat different
than other vehicles that I have worked on. Maybe it is just being masked
by the more serious problem which sound much more like computer noise
in that it sounds "digital" and varies quite a bit across the AM band.
Of course it appears to be worse on his favorite station. He is in the
hospital now and on the chance that he will recover I thought I might
try to work on it since I will have it for a period of time.
This model uses a zig-zag wire in the rear window for an antenna. I did
see something in the manual that indicated that a separate antenna could
not be used with this radio -- which I assume to mean that there is some
sort of preamp at the back window -- just that I have not had a chance to
look for it yet.
The hood and trunk are not RF bonded to the frame as far as I can tell.
And
I assume that the exhaust pipe is also not RF bonded to the frame. So I
will do the bonding as an automatic first step. Just wonder if anyone has
any specific things they know that help this problem. This seems SO BAD
that I almost have to believe that something is actually wrong since at
night there are only one or two sky wave signals that you can hear over the
noise.
Thanks in advance for any help or insight.
73--John W0UN
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