My car radio seems to have been inhabited by a ghost: I'm driving along, listening to the slow jams on Foxy 107 FM, and suddenly the frequency hops down. It's been happening with greater frequency over the past week to the point that this morning Owen Bennet Jones was interrupted every 3 minutes with a trip 0.2 down the dial. Local College Station keeps skipping up to Local Moderately Sucky Jazz Station.
A little innernet searching hasn't yielded any newsgroup discussions of problems like this. That's a little disconcerting, because that means it's not a common problem. My limited knowledge of audio electronics has led me to hypothesize that the problem is with whatever mechanism scans the radio frequencies. I further hypothesize that whatever in this mechanism makes it cease scanning frequencies has gotten "loose" or "wiggy" and thus jumps around unexpectedly.
I'm afraid I may have to call (gasp) the dealer, but I suspect they won't offer any help until I haul the car into their shop and have them charge me $80 for zip ties like they did last time. Maybe I should call the Car Talk guys. Or maybe I should get in touch with Tangina Barrons.
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2 comments:
I've seen this happen with some radios (particularly Saturn radios), and while you can try and get some canned air to blow the dust out of the buttons, or even take the radio apart and clean the buttons; there may still be something awry in the electronics you can't fix, and you're better off getting a new radio.
shit! i'll try the canned air first, since i keep it around for photo uses. know anywhere i can get a cheap radio?
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