Lotiman
Active Member
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2015
- Messages
- 314
- Car
- S204 C350 CDi; R171 200SLK; Lotus Evora 400; Lotus Exige V6
Having fitted new boot struts and generally tidied up the wife's recently bought low mileage SLK I have continued in my quest to make the car as good as it can possibly be.
Next on the agenda was the poor radio reception for some of the less well known stations I like to listen to. I trawled the various MB sites and it appears this is a common problem with fixes ranging from a new signal booster to a complete new antenna, or even modifying the existing short 'bee sting' type antenna.
To eliminate the OEM fitted signal booster as the potential problem, I unscrewed the short antenna and simply rested a metal coat hanger in the socket to see if that improved things. Well improve things it certainly did and I could now tune into all manner of small stations while sitting on the drive. Obviously I couldn't let the wife drive around with a coat hanger sticking out of the car wing like a 1970's taxi, so looked online and found this
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006J9SYW2/?tag=amazon0e9db-21
At a cost of just £3.21 delivered I thought it's worth a punt so went for it. It arrived yesterday, just 2 days after placing the order and took about 30 seconds to fit, using the supplied 6mm stud. What a difference it makes! I can now pick up even more stations than with the improvised coat hanger and its altogether better than what we had with the OEM aerial.
After my previous success with finding cheap boot struts, I'm getting to like this way of shopping for SLK parts more and more. The one irony in all this though is that my wife never, ever switches the radio on whilst driving!
Next on the agenda was the poor radio reception for some of the less well known stations I like to listen to. I trawled the various MB sites and it appears this is a common problem with fixes ranging from a new signal booster to a complete new antenna, or even modifying the existing short 'bee sting' type antenna.
To eliminate the OEM fitted signal booster as the potential problem, I unscrewed the short antenna and simply rested a metal coat hanger in the socket to see if that improved things. Well improve things it certainly did and I could now tune into all manner of small stations while sitting on the drive. Obviously I couldn't let the wife drive around with a coat hanger sticking out of the car wing like a 1970's taxi, so looked online and found this
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006J9SYW2/?tag=amazon0e9db-21
At a cost of just £3.21 delivered I thought it's worth a punt so went for it. It arrived yesterday, just 2 days after placing the order and took about 30 seconds to fit, using the supplied 6mm stud. What a difference it makes! I can now pick up even more stations than with the improvised coat hanger and its altogether better than what we had with the OEM aerial.
After my previous success with finding cheap boot struts, I'm getting to like this way of shopping for SLK parts more and more. The one irony in all this though is that my wife never, ever switches the radio on whilst driving!
