Had my car over a year with almost 18,000 miles. Today I pulled out and about 3 minutes later the radio staton I was listening too went from 96.9 to 96.7 by it's self..No joke! Really didn't think much about it as i just turned it back and went down the road on a 35 miile trip without any other issue. Until I got back in the car 7 hours later and drove off listening to 100.7 and it AGAIN dropped down to 100.5 just a few mins after I drove off. Now this time I'm thinking the cars taking on a life of it's own. But I switch back to it's original place and drove home again without another issue. Did a search and couldn't see anybody else with this strange issue. And no I wasn't drinking! And I didn't hit the dial on the steering wheel. I have the car in next tuesday for service and was thinking about mentioning it..But you know how that goes..."We couldn't get the radio to reproduce the issue you were having." Thanks for any feedback in regards to thie issue.......

 

does it only happen when driving? maybe some dirt in the steering wheel switches making them sensitive to vibration. a guess. try to duplicate it by "flicking"or gently tapping switches.

 

Will try it thanks

 

Ok...I am not the only one( I dindn't want to look crazy..) The exact same thing
happened to me a few weeks ago, it lasted about a week but it hasn't happened since.

 

I used to be a bench technician fixiing computers and toughest problems to troubleshoot/fix are intermittent electrical ones.

can be dust, moisture, contact plating comes off, weak or broken return springs or diaphragmsin switches.

but it may not be switches at all. could be the chips themselves. heat kills chips and when they get hot they can act up. Let them cool down and they can work fine. frustrating to troubleshoot. There may not be much you can do to troubleshoot the chips however. I used heat guns and cooling sprays to isolate faulty IC's but that wont help ya at all unless you can somehow get the radio/switches out of the car while keeping them connected. One thing is for sure, the intermittency (time between failures) will shorten to the point where it is no longer intermittent but constant. Then its easy to fix. Start replacing ****.

 

Happened again this morning so I turned the tuning dial around in hopes that somehow it was not quite set and well see if that helps. I don't think heat is an issue as it's happened all 3 times right ( less than 5 min) after I start car and drive off.

 

I like 96.7 better anyway..

 

If your 8 is good to you be good to it and let it listen to the music it likes

 

On European models there is an automatic search function for when your radio reception becomes weak. The radio automatically searches for a stronger signal. If your reception gets better everytime the frequency mysteriously changes, maybe it is this function working?

 

My radio has done the same thing twice. I was bringing it in to the dealer anyway, and they told me they are going to replace the radio. I was surprised by this, since I told them I just wanted to mention it. It must have happened to them on their test drive.

I was suspicious of the wheel controls. I never use them, and I've had the car for over a year. I pushed the tuner button up and down a few times. The problem has not reoccured in 2 weeks. I'm not going to have the dealer put in a new radio right now. I'm afraid of them screwing up other things.

I think the dust issue is the problem.

 

Scan or seek button stuck on?

 

I didn't know you could adjust the radio station with the steering wheel (except to change the PRE-SET stations).

His stations are off my one notch (going down), I'd say it's more to do with the **** ON the radio rather than the buttons on the steering wheel. Maybe a defective switch.

 

Don't think our 8's have that feature... be nice if they did though.

 

Wankeler,

Good point, it does just change the presets. It hasn't reoccurred since I played with the buttons, though. I very rarely use the tune button on the radio, it could be I cleared the problem with I used it to go back to the station I was on originally.

Maybe the solution is just to press all the buttons on the radio a few times and clean them up. Seems silly, but I can't believe this is a serious problem with the radio.

 

Never had this with my RX-8, but I had something similar happen last winter on my GMC Envoy. In very cold weather on several different days the temperature setting would suddenly increase or decrease by several degrees and/or randomly move around. Of course, the dealer could not replicate it. It stopped doing it after a few weeks and hasn't happend since. I think maybe it was a poltergeist!

 

Yep, you can adjust the freqs by holding in the up/down arrow. Pre-sets by push once.

cool huh?

 

Yeah that IS cool... will have to review my manual.

Does it allow manual tuning or do they function more like "SCAN" where it just locates the next clearest signal strength on the tuner?

 

I have had this problem too.
But with AM.
I will be on 640 and then static, I look down and Im on 888 or something
This happend 3 times last week on a single drive but not since.
Maybe its sun spots?

 

"...frequency will continue changing without stopping." (OM, pg 6-23)

 

I have been having the same problem, havn't taken it in yet though. It seems to happen whe I hit a bump, like a short or something. But it is the same just goes down one station.

 

I have been having the same problem for the last 3 days - my car is at about 20,000kms - it happens both on am and fm - service dept is closed today - have to wait until Monday - hopefully this problem doesn't continue!!