NEW MEMBER - JUST BOUGHT A 2006 SEAT IBIZA DAB SPECIAL EDITION - NEED HELP!

[dewi15dewi]

Hi everyone!

It's great to be here.

Really happy with my little Ibiza but was pretty gutted to find, after I made the purchase, that the radio barely seems to work at all. Some times I can get a few fm channels but hardly any, and nothing at all comes through when it's in DAB mode. The original Blaupunkt unit is still in the car, CDs work fine, speakers all work fine. Is there any chance anybody might be able to make any suggestions on what I might do to get the DAB up and running? I know the car is pretty old but she actually runs really nicely, just under 80k on the clock. Just wish I could get the radio to work, especially since it's in the cars name haha.

Hope to hear from anyone soon.

Cheers!

 

[JamesKing]

Welcome! I'm new around here too, I don't know exactly what the issue might be, but would start with the ariel / antenna if haven't already and receiving a couple of FM stations (I'm assuming they're local ones) like you mentioned. Have you given it a look at, check it's fixed on properly and stuff and doesn't look damaged at all?

That would be where I would start just from technical knowledge and it working a bit. Could also fix the issue with DAB too, as with it being digital, it's either all or nothing when picking up stations, so if the signal isn't enough for it to work completely, it just won't work at all basically.

Hope that yields some results for you, welcome to the community!

 

[Syphon]

Welcome to the community

Scott

 

[dewi15dewi]

Welcome! I'm new around here too, I don't know exactly what the issue might be, but would start with the ariel / antenna if haven't already and receiving a couple of FM stations (I'm assuming they're local ones) like you mentioned. Have you given it a look at, check it's fixed on properly and stuff and doesn't look damaged at all?

That would be where I would start just from technical knowledge and it working a bit. Could also fix the issue with DAB too, as with it being digital, it's either all or nothing when picking up stations, so if the signal isn't enough for it to work completely, it just won't work at all basically.

Hope that yields some results for you, welcome to the community!

Hi James, thanks so much for your reply! I have had a look at the screw-on aerial on the roof of the car and it looks to be in good order. There is some white residue around the thread of the screw but not much. I'm in central London and my home DAB works fine so not sure what else to try. Might just fixing a new aerial to the roof work? Or would I need to do a lot of wiring through the car?

 

[JamesKing]

Hi James, thanks so much for your reply! I have had a look at the screw-on aerial on the roof of the car and it looks to be in good order. There is some white residue around the thread of the screw but not much. I'm in central London and my home DAB works fine so not sure what else to try. Might just fixing a new aerial to the roof work? Or would I need to do a lot of wiring through the car?

No problem at all! Just a quick one, you don't have a phone charger or sat nav etc plugged into the cigarette lighter (12V port) while noticing the problem do you? If so, just try unplugging that and see if that makes it any better?

Hmm, I'm definitely no expert and someone else on here might have some more experience and can offer more useful suggestions to try, but the aerial would be the first place I would start giving the issues you're getting. If it looks like it's screwed on properly though and there isn't any visible damage that might indicate a problem then I'd just follow onto checking the next easiest / cheapest things to try along that system.

It could be the aerial is perfectly fine and it's a dodgy cable somewhere, or possibly just the connector in the back of the stereo unit is loose. So checking any easy to access connections between your stereo and the aerial would be the next thing I'd do, then I'd imagine getting a new aerial to try would be the next easiest and possibly the cheapest thing to try if you're wanting to diagnose it yourself. Then from there I'd really start trying to diagnose other stuff, maybe a lack of power to the unit so the aerial isn't getting as much power as it needs etc, which can sometimes be a common issue in some cars the minute you plug in a phone to charge or something else into the cigarette lighter as it consumes a lot of the available 12V power rail meaning the stereo doesn't have as much power to give to the aerial ultimately resulting in it now being as powerful as it needs to be. This is why I asked above to just unplug anything you had in there, just to check as it might put you along the right lines to solving it.

But yeah, others on here probably have a lot more context of the specific hardware you might have and some common things to check for, I'm a new Cupra owner myself so very new to the area and just offering my advice of the way I'd start looking at the problem hoping it might help a little bit or pull out a bit more context for someone on here with more knowledge.

Really do hope you manage to find a solution soon!