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Sat Mar 20, 2010 8:15 pm

hi gents
hope you can help me i just had my 1600 rebuilt in my 71 super and now i get a loud clicking in the radio when i'm driving
anyone know what i can do about it turn the engine off and it's fine
hope you can help thanks gary :?

Sat Mar 20, 2010 8:35 pm

Sound like you have rfi or called radio frequency interference. this can be caused by ignition systems. Such as cheap ignition wires. Or maybe an electric fuel pump. I am Amatuer radio operator and have seen all kind of things cause noise in radios. Check all the ground conections make sure they are clean and tight. You can also try grounding the chassis of your radio. My girlfriends mini van once came ack fro the shop after getting a new water pump and the speedometer was jumping aound when driving and the radio was impossible to listen to on am. Was checking the fluid one day and noticed a ground strap was not connected to the alternator. The alternator has to be moved out of the way to replace the water pump thus the mechanic forgot to reinstall when finishing up. The speedometer and the radio where usable again. Btw this just came to me maybe it is alternator noise. Let us know.

Sun Mar 21, 2010 9:14 am

Were new spark plug wires installed? Some are resistance wires for this reason.

On one of my VWs, the radio and cassete player were picking up ignition noise from the headlight switch wires running just above it; I relocated the headlight switch to under the dash (didn't change any wires) to fix that (isolated by running the engine with stereo sitting in trunk away from the headlight switch).

Sun Mar 21, 2010 10:31 am

In an old jeep I had I could hear the engine through the radio as well. I installed a noise filter like this. http://www.crutchfield.com/p_003S15A/American-Inte...&ssi=0

I picked mine up at radio shack but I didn't see one online there when I searched.

Sun Mar 21, 2010 1:39 pm

My guess would also be spark plug wires.

Years ago, when some cars would drive past my house (I had an antenna on the roof) if a car came by with bad spark plug wires, it would cause a sudden bad reception on the TV.

Hope that helps.

Sun Mar 21, 2010 2:58 pm

Keep in mind that ORIGINAL wires are solid core wires {zero resistance} and the resistor is built into the connector that attaches to the plug. This results in a very small section of wire that has a magnetic field around it. With the introduction of carbon core wires the magnetic feild is spread out over the entire length of the spark plug wire. If someone used more modern carbon core suppression wires and used the original ends then resistance would increase. This would increase the current flow through the wire and create a larger magnetic field around the wire. and could be causing your RFI problem in the radio. A simple solution is to add a noise suppression filter.