OB No AM Radio / Poor FM Reception

I recently inherited at 2005 OB with 69K miles. The radio was very poor with weak FM and NO AM reception. I have just replaced the radio with the known good high-quality receiver from my prior car. The FM reception is a little better and there is still no AM reception at all.

 

Some questions:

1. Has anyone else experienced no AM reception and determined why?

2. Is there some fundamental design problem with the antenna?

3. Has anyone installed an external fixed antenna, perhaps on passenger side front fender?

 

I'll appreciate your knowledge!

I'm dealing with this right now. The antenna is built into the rear window and develops breaks in the wire. I used a silver laced epoxy to repair the traces, and it got better, but not great. I'm looking into adding an external sometime soon, but haven't found one yet.

Sounds like no circuit to the antenna. Remove radio from dash, leave connected, turn on power, find the antenna wire leaving the radio itself, ground it to metal. If reception returns, you have a bad antenna or antenna circuit.

I did a bunch of work on this the last couple days. There's a small antenna amplifier in the upper trim of the tailgate. It has one plug for the window antenna, and another plug that has 2 wires going into it. One is the coax antenna wire, and the other is black with orange marks on it. Does anyone know what the black/orange wire is connected to? There was no voltage on it with the radio on or off, and I don't think it's the "power antenna" wire out of the stereo, because I have that routed to an amp and it works fine.

 

My solution to this problem was to buy a cheap window antenna with amplifier (like this one: [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Metra-44-UA200-Universal-Amplified-Antenna/dp/B0007WRQ8K/ref=sr_1_1?t=mariahandadam-20]Amazon.com: Metra 44-UA200 Universal On Glass Amplified AM/FM Antenna: Car Electronics[/ame] ).

 

I mounted it on the rear window roughly where the current built in wires are and spliced the antenna line from it into the cable that used to go to the factory amplifier. There's also a +12V wire that needs to go somewhere. I had the remote line in my trunk already, so I ran it to that. The only other thing I would do is cover up the LED on the new antenna since it is stupid bright, and if you mount it where I did it shines right into the rear view mirror, and is a bit annoying.

Any idea where that amplifier would be located in a sedan?

FWIW (I think i'm late for this particular party):

 

outbacks run a load of cables thru two boots between the body and the rear gate. after a few years, people start losing radio reception, rear wiper, rear door unlock, etc.

 

it's caused by the bending of the wires and the insulation/wires break over time. easiest fix is to re-splice the connection with another wire, best fix (although it only buys you another ~4 years) is to purchase the wiring section from Subaru for ~$60 and replace the whole thing.

 

there's a few threads on the problem/fix:

 

http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php?t=161086&referrerid=48988

Yep that's the thread you should have found.