I noticed the aerial on my new (second hand) MkII Fabia Monte Carlo has been damaged at some point; the end's broken off. The Swing radio has very poor reception (unsurprisingly) so unscrewing the broken aerial and screwing in a new one seems like the obvious first step to fix that. I had a quick look online and there seem to be a bewildering variety of different lengths of aerial available to replace it, ranging from pencil sized to fishing rod!

 

Please could someone with a similar age Mk II run a tape measure over their aerial and let me know what length it's supposed to be? 

200mm

Thank you! I'll get a new one ordered. 

If your radio reception doesn't improve as much as you think it should, you might be worth replacing the base on the roof too. Its quite common for them to get a bit of moisture in and corrode causing a short to earth that impedes the radio reception.

"Corrosion causing a short to earth."

 

A novel concept.............................

 

 

For some reason I seem to remember that there maybe 2 aerials or 2 connectors at the back of the stereo so if just replacing the aerial does not work it may be worth looking at the back of the stereo to see if there is anything wrong there.

Many thanks to all for the advice!

 

At the moment I only have half an aerial on the roof and I'm pretty sure that's a good reason the radio can only find a few stations and loses signal/gains noise the moment I go over a hill. When it does have a signal, the sound quality is fine, which should indicate there's not much wrong with the circuit from the aerial to the radio once it actually finds something to pull in, shouldn't it?

 

I've ordered a 23cm replacement aerial (allowing for threading into the roof mount, I think) and will update when I've fitted it; should arrive by midweek at the latest. I did read a few threads suggesting there can be water/corrosion problems with the mount, and that would be my next place to go if the new aerial doesn't fix things. 

 

I've also read a couple of threads indicating that 'fit a new aerial' can be a little more physically challenging than just unscrewing the old one and screwing the new one in, and I'm prepared to wrestle with it. 🙂

Can anyone tell me where the second aerial is on a fabia?