2004 Avalon - Tuning FM radio to unused station?

Not sure if this covers it - for years, radio transmissions have been confined to specific channels (ie, frequencies). Standards differ between the US and non-US for Medium Wave at least (hence the little switch found on "world" radios). Here we are talking about VHF where channels are widely spaced, thanks to its use by FM transmissions that have substantial bandwidth. AFAIK setting an inter-channel frequency is not possible on a basic car radio.

I'm pretty sure that you are using the "seek" function where it scans and stops at a frequency with a signal. Instead of holding the button until it beeps, try tapping it or see if you can tune it by turning or touching the knob on the right side of the radio. If all else fails, try the owner's manual ;-)

Thanks for your replies. First - I'm using the TUNE button and not the SCAN button. I think the problem is as mentioned in the first reply... I was looking to TUNE to frequencies that may not even be 'tunable'. I just find it intriguing that every frequency I can tune to seems to have some amount of noise and even a 'stereo' indicator. Again, thanks for the quick and concise replies.

Be aware that in Toyotas, the tune button often has a tune and a seek function, while the scan button scans the preset channels. The dual-function tune/seek button usually has 2 modes - a quick tap to step up or down, and hold until it beeps to seek the next station with a signal above a certain threshold, or else you turn the knob to electronically tune.

Out of follow-up curiosity, today I fiddled with my Prius' radio and see that on VHF (UK, NB) it steps by 50KHz and stations seem to be set at 100KHz spacings. So that clobbers the "cannot tune between channels" theory -- at least on UK VHF. Sorry. :-( Or maybe the Prius' radio doesn't count as "basic"? :-)

Actually, my Avalon has separate TUNE / SCAN buttons. I've just noticed the TUNE button advances the frequency by .2 with each press (e.g. 88.9, 99.1, 99.3) etc. I'm now suspicious that my signal problem is more related to the distance from the DLO to the radio antennae on the rear window. Thanks again for all the input.

You got it! The adapter should work fine from the front of the passenger compartment to the rear window. My kinds use one in our Avalon and it seems to work OK. I'm not sure how they tuned the transmitter, but they had it up and running about 2 minutes after they got it out of the package.

European tuning is different from North American and Japanese tuning. Having not lived in Europe, I don't know why, but the European tuning is tighter.

I have had radios by Kenwood and JVC that could be set for the shorter stepping.

Things are a bit more crowded here. (For now at least. Once you guys have filled up the place with people and, um, Stuff from sea to formerly-shining sea, that should change.) Could be we became more stringent about receiver performance, sooner, because of the competition. Medium Wave crawls with fragments of distant trans- missions here. Nowadays we all buy our radios from China, so the USA could tighten its specs too -- except for the major hassle of wholesale retuning of transmitters _that_ would entail.