Have posted this question in newsgroups and whatever else I could think of and have yet to solve the problem.

Since day one, AM radio is unlistenable in my 98 OBS. There is very severe AM radio noise with much high pitched squealing. Everything you do affects it, turning on the directionals, pressing the brake, etc. in that the pitch and level of noise changes. Sometimes it will nearly go away for brief periods of time but always comes back. It is not the radio itself nor the antenna system. While the ignition is on, any radio you bring near the vicinity will not receive AM. I tried taking a little portable radio and moving it around parts of the engine to see if it got stronger or weaker in certain locations but it was just overwhelmingly strong in the whole engine vicinity. Even though the car is five years old, I still would fix this problem if possible. I read one article from the web that said the car computers could sometimes cause AM noise and that would be my best but blind guess. If I was positive that was it, I might price having it replaced although I bet it would be more money then I'm willing to spend.

If its picking up that much interference, there must be a bad ground or something wrong with the radio. I used to get a little feedback on my radio and often had a lot of experience when we had electrical storms present or I got close to a cell phone tower. I listened religiously to a local AM station in Miami for traffic, and I did notice that it got better with a new head unit.

I bought a WRX head unit which should be a direct plug and play application for your MY98 OBS. :) I added one to my RS and the sound improved. I also believe it has a better tuner as well.

Best of luck and welcome to the club,
Matt

Afeter getting my car used back in feb. i had the same problem. It was really bad if i turned on the AC. It would get progressively worse the higher up i would turn the fan.


Then, one day, it stopped.:confused:

Hmmm...no unfortunately mine hasn't stopped. Doing such things as pushing the brakes can either make it worse or better. It's not the radio because as mentioned any radio brought in the vicinity will exhibit the same symptoms if I have the ignition on. Also, I didn't mention but the present radio is my second one and the first one behaved the same as well.

We used to do this years ago when all we had was AM. If the interferance is being picked up by the antenna ( you can check this by unscrewing the antenna and seeing if the interferance goes down without turning down the volume) try grounding the hood. It sometimes worked. Just use a peice of wire, if it helps buy a nice braded grounding strap. Ground the hinge, hood side to the firewall. Also check to see if the outside of the coax cable to the antenna is grounded. It sometimes comes loose where it attaches to the plug. If you feel this interferance is mostly ignition you could have a bad ignition wire.