AM radio reception

[aspenpup]

Just had to drive my wife's car and realize that the AM reception is not very good. I did a search on this subject and did not find anything. Is there a way to improve the reception? I know I should be getting good reception since by Suburban sounds fine on the same channels.

[JCL]

I did a search and got 48 threads.

I have read lots on this board about poor AM reception on the E53 (I never listened to AM myself). The consensus was that it was a poorly designed system, and any small problem made it worse.

The antennae is in the left rear window glass, which isn't ideal. There is an antennae booster, apparently in the rear spoiler, which can sometimes fail. Some posters have found replacing that item helps, others not so much.

There was apparently a BMW service bulletin, mentioned in the articles page. The link to that post is here:

http://www.xoutpost.com/articles/x5/...radio-tsb.html

[roadfrog]

I haven't done it yet, but apparently if you attach a wire from the exhaust system to the frame (metal), you'll gain a far better signal. Hockey season is fast approaching and play-by-play on the local am radio station is a must have!!