Newbie to Audi, but not new to the platform. I had a B5 Passat for the last 5 years, and finally decided to upgrade to the 2.7T and Audi-esque luxury.

I had this same issue in the Passat, with a hard-wired Escort Solo S2 using the Escort Smartcord. It sits by the mirror and the wires run down the drivers A-pillar to a fusetap in the fusebox. Ground is firmly attached to a tested ground point on the dash chassis by the fusebox.

The Issue:

The radar detector intermittently ruins my radio reception. It's intermittent in that the radio generally works fine as I begin driving, but within 20 minutes or so the reception will deteriorate to squawking and squelching.

Shutting the radar detector off or disconnecting the 12v lead at the detector solves the problem immediately, and it always works fine on battery power (The S2 can run on batteries as well as the 12v smartcord). The issue persists if I remove the batteries with the 12v power connected.

I've tried many switched and non-switched fuses for the fusetap, with no change. I generally leave it connected to the non-switched cig-lighter fuse so that I don't have to turn it on every time I get in (Escort's Smartcord isn't smart enough to turn the detector on with switched power).

In the passat, I ran a 12 ga ground to the radio to make sure it was properly grounded. I also tried wrapping the radar detector in tinfoil and grounding the tinfoil with gator clips to see if it would help, but it didn't. I replaced the antennae and the antennae base also, to see if the antennae was the issue, but it wasn't.

Now that the problem persists in the A6 I'm even more stumped.

I know that others have used a similar path for the cables without issue, so I don't feel as though there is an issue with the routing.

Any ideas or other areas to check?

Thanks in advance,

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Paul

 

Paul,

My thoughts would be that it is the detector itself that is causing the problem. It can be interference that is radiated (foil should stop that) or conducted down the power cord. I'm thinking conducted since you said you already tried foil. My first try would be to purchase a power line filter for the 12V line, plenty at Radio Shack and see what that does for you.

Regards, Bob J.

 

Thanks Bob. I'll give that a try one day this week and post the results.

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Paul

 

I went to Radio Shack, they seemed confused about what a line filter was. Can you clarify at all?

The Radio Shack guy said he had a German car in the past where the speakers were each ground directly to the chassis, causing any other chassis ground to mess with the speakers. Any thoughts? Still wouldn't really explain why the CD player works fine...

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Paul

 

I read another thread where fusetaps were used, and the orientation of the taps was important. I flipped the fusetap over (now resides upside-down in fusebox) and everything works great. No idea why, but it does.

Thanks again for the help,

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Paul