I recently purchased a 2000 wrangler SE and am about to put a lot of $$$ into it. The first thing that I'm looking at is the stereo. It's the stock AM/FM cassette job. Here's what's buggin' me...AM is fine-crystal clear. Cassette is fine-crystal clear. FM has a whole lot of alternator noise. What could be causing this? and should I fix this prior to getting a CD system? Shouldn't the noise be on everything if it's from the alternator? any help would be appreciated!
Keepin' Jeepin' Gardner
You need a special feed-through capacitor that kills alternator noise. It bolts to the alternator case and you splice it into the big red wire. Google "noise suppression" car stereo and you'll probably find something. Evidently it's up in the 100MHz region where FM lives... FM should be immune to this noise (it's AM noise, after all) but there's no allowing for cheapness. __ Steve (KI5YG) .
Approximately 9/3/03 20:44, Beasleys3 uttered for posterity:
The noise can get into the radio two ways. Check and/or add bypass caps at the alternator itself so it can't radiate noise to be picked up by the I/F of the radio. You may also need to add or replace a bypass at the DC power to the radio itself. If not familiar, local car audio shop should be able to help. With the caution that noise suppression is often counterintuitive.
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