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View Full Version : My Sirius radio is acting weird..any electrical whizzes in the house?


S-L-A-C-K-E-R
11-14-2008, 10:54 AM
It's one of those units you stick to your windshield with a suction cup base. It plugs into your cigarette lighter.

The problem is that it will make loud pops here and there and it seems to go with the music...mostly with the drums. :confused:

I've done a ton of troubleshooting to find the problem and I am almost certain that the problem is with my cigarette lighter output in my car.

Heres my trouble shooting

1.) I used the home kit that I have for the radio. It uses a different antennae and an A/C adapter. I used it on my home stereo and tried both the fm transmitter and the direct connection and neither made the noises. So I don't think it's anything wrong with the unit itself or the fm transmitter.

2.) I put the unit in the car and used the home kit antennea instead of the car kit antennae. The problems were still there. So it's not the car kit antennae.

3.) I went into my wife's car and tuned to the fm station on her car and got the signal. The unit was still hooked up in my car. I heard the same pops on her radio. So that led me to believe that it wasn't the radio in my car.

4.) I hooked up the whole unit in my wife's car and the problem went away. So I would guess that the cable that hooks up to the cigarette lighter is working fine.

The only thing left that could be wrong is the cigarette lighter in my car. Could it be putting out too much or too little power or something like that? It didn't always have this problem in this particular car. It just suddenly started doing it one day and it's been consistently doing it since. It doesn't start doing it right away either. Usually it takes anywhere from 1 - 5 minutes to start making the noises.

Any ideas? :dunno

rollyfoster
11-14-2008, 10:57 AM
maybe the contacts in your cigarette lighter are dirty. try replacing the fuse for it, too.

PAF
11-14-2008, 11:00 AM
No tech insight here other than I'd strongly recommend getting out of the broadcast to FM station setup & go with a hardwired into your radio setup. You'll need a different sattelite tuner but the connection will be bulletproof and the fidelity will be much better

Peterma
11-14-2008, 11:02 AM
The difference between having the radio hardwired and not is drastic.

I bought a car with it built in and it sounds so much better.

S-L-A-C-K-E-R
11-14-2008, 01:14 PM
maybe the contacts in your cigarette lighter are dirty. try replacing the fuse for it, too.

That's what I was thinking. I'll try cleaning the contacts and checking the fuse. Thanks!

JofZ
11-14-2008, 03:27 PM
That's what I was thinking. I'll try cleaning the contacts and checking the fuse. Thanks!

NOt sure if this helps, but over the last week Sirius and XM merged channels. My built in car unit acted nutz until yesterday when the merge completed. YOu might just need to reset it. Too bad Channel 12 came and went, bring back a real Zep station you tools :)

Dr. Tweedbucket
11-14-2008, 05:53 PM
Since the clicking or popping goes with the drums, and the bass kick drum freqencies suck the most power from your power supply, maybe your 12V is poorly regulated. Try jumpering your DC power directly to your fuse box (fused). Make sure your ground is solid as well. :drink

The best deal too as mentioned is to hardwire directly into your radio inputs.

Ren5150
11-15-2008, 08:41 AM
NOt sure if this helps, but over the last week Sirius and XM merged channels. My built in car unit acted nutz until yesterday when the merge completed. YOu might just need to reset it. Too bad Channel 12 came and went, bring back a real Zep station you tools :)

Channel 12 was moved to 33, still all Zep.

enharmonic
11-15-2008, 09:16 AM
I can't get it hardwired into my Yaris. My Sirius receiver mysteriously stopped giving me the artist alerts this week. I have a full memory bank of artists that I listen for...but nada.

I figured out there was a problem when I started switching stations and finding artists that are on my artist alert. So as a test, I added the Beatles back into one of my memory slots...nothing. You know that's a problem, because they play the Beatles every 12 seconds on satellite radio :D