Radio Trouble - Weak Signals in a Big City?

[aquallsy]

I tried searching the forum for an answer, but wasn’t able to find anything.

I just got a 2001 Camry and it seems the factory radio is a bit weak. When I hit the scan button it enters into an endless loop looking for a solid station. Now I know of a bunch of stations that I should get crystal clear and they come in ok when I manual tune into them, but is there way to improve this without buying a new car stereo?



any help would be greatly appreciated!!

[eddie926]

These may be stupid questions, but gotta ask. I don't really know how the 2001 stereo works, so I'm just going based off my '95 stock radio, and other radios I've had experience with.

Do you mean it NEVER stops at all when in scan mode? Or it hits a station and stops for a couple seconds and then goes on? The normal scan mode is to find the next highest frequency station and stop on it for about 5 seconds, then go on.

For "seek" mode, where it finds the next station and then completely stops, you have to hold the scan button down until it beeps, at least that's how the stock radio in my '95 worked.

Another possibility, and I repeat that I don't know about the 2001 stock radio, I've seen some radios that when you hit scan, it just cycled through your presets, so if you didn't have anything programmed into your presets it would appear to do nothing except flounder around.

If none of the above, you say you can tune them in manually and they work. Are they strong when you tune them manually, or are they kind of weak and staticy? Even if scan IS working correctly the signal strength has to be at a certain level before it will lock on during scan.

[toyomoho]

Also check antenna connections as this relates directly to radio reception.