Before sending the radio out to pasture, you may wish to check the antenna, lead-in cable, and plug first. While antenna issues usually mainly affect AM reception first, there are instances that can affect FM and not AM. Three areas that the antennas fail at are the ground clamp at the base of the antenna that grounds the shield of the antenna lead-in cable to the body of the vehicle and acts as the ground-plane of the antenna. Another area is oxidation on the antenna plugin connector. Last is a break or short in the coax lead-in. You can unplug the antenna from the radio and use an ohm meter to measure from the center pin of the plug to the antenna mast itself - should be close to 0 Ohms. Then measure from the outer conductor of the plug to any chassis point inside the vehicle - should also be about 0 Ohms. Then measure form the center pin of the plug to the outer conductor - should be infinite resistance. However if there is any corrosion at either the antenna connection or plug end, it can create added capacitance that will attenuate the high frequency FM stations and not affect the low frequency AM stations. If all that checks out, then try removing the radio from the dash and, while still electrically connected and turned on, tapping on the radio with the handle of a screwdriver to check for intermittent connections or cold solder joints. From there, if is does intermittently work, you'd need to take the covers off and continue tapping around with an insulated tool to locate the area and repair it. Then of course if none of this works and as pointed out above, junk yards for $5 or as they like to be called now, Automotive Recycling Centers, for $20!

Oops. Quite right there. Here's the link. Got to be careful anymore. I got "flagged" in another forum for posting these questions since a member was convince that i was trying to sell these transmitters. Even after assurances to the contrary, and reposting my question free of any links to the brand or vendor, he remained unconvinced and kept complaining to the moderators. Wow. USB2.0 FM Audio transmitter Wireless adapter : eBay and pics of the inside of device http://i802.photobucket.com/albums/y...t/SDC14269.jpg http://i802.photobucket.com/albums/y...t/SDC14278.jpg http://images15.fotki.com/v588/photo...209/FM2-vi.gif http://images52.fotki.com/v1551/phot...209/FM1-vi.gif Since my post I decided to simplify the matter quite a bit by just using a set of rabbit ears, "tuned" to about 53inch total length (both "ears" laid vertically) via an online calculator for 1/2 dipole, and simply soldering the USB card directly to the antenna via 1/4 inch stubs of the flat twin lead emerging from the antenna's base. The little bit of twin lead used to reach the xmitter is negligible in the calcualtions (actually I did shave an approx amount of length from the measurement of the "ears". That was super easy. I rationalized, from the seat-of-the-pants, that thus eliminating any coax or distance between the xmitter and the antenna minimized the necessity for any further balancing via a balun. I secured this vertically in a first floor hall closet in the middle of the house.... basically its a rabbit ears version of this.. http://www.qsl.net/va3iul/Antenna/Wire%20Antennas%20for%20Ham%20Radio/16-Vertical%20Dipole%20Antenna.jpg ...and ran 12 ft of USB cable down to the laptop in my workshop. It works spectacularly! Crystal clear stereo fm out to about 150 ft of my house wherein it drops of quite suddenly. I thing the vertical 1/2 wave produces a nice clean toroid of coverage just where I need it without concern for overstepping myself Without a lot of adjustment I seem to have stumbled onto just what I wanted. The locator site was either out of date or not specific enough to my neighborhood (being based only on zip code). A couple of the freqs I chose according to that site had rather clear and strong stations already there. I drove around in my car in around an approx 1/2 mile perimeter of my home and located a channel, 106.4 that was dead quiet within 100mz in either direction. Worked out great.

No. I have never found any metric machine threaded fastener that will directly interchange with any NF or NC standard fastener. But you can certainly try it. Your math is a bit off. 32 threads per inch is 0.03125 (inches) per turn. Metric .8 is 0.31496 (inches), a difference of 0.000246. Not much but the difference will accumulate and it will jam. And that metric screw is almost 0.007 (inches) larger diameter than the #10--32. In this context, that is MUCH larger. This post was edited by bus_driver on Mon, Nov 18, 13 at 16:25

Thanks, both. I had sent him an email to come out and rework it, but I think he doesn't understand the issue even as much as I do, and that's a very small amount. I'll hire someone who does and eat the cost rather than let him mess with it. (FWIW, I started being suspicious of him when he didn't know to loop the co-ax so that water would drip off outside rather than run into the house. When I started looking, I started finding things that made me nervous.)