I recently fitted a Seicane audio head unit to replace the existing Comand module in my 2003 SL500. It's a considerable improvement, offering Bluetooth, Apple Carplay, SD card storage & USB for music, much better navigation etc. etc. However, radio reception ( never very good anyway) is vary poor - only one FM station tunes in. My understanding is that the radio ariels are within the windscreen ( ribbon types either side). Anyway, seeing as how I no longer need the phone antenna in the rear wing, could this be used for the radio instead? It'd be a very neat fix if so.

Thanks for any help & advice.

I did the android Head unit swap last fall and noticed the same thing - terrible FM reception. I was forewarned by latemodel21 of this.

rather than mess around with more adapters, cables, and trying to bypass the antenna switchers/amplifiers just the use one of the lousy stock antennae, I simply purchased a universal auto FM wire antenna and connected it right to the head unit. The antenna is behind the dash and loops around some before heading up to clock area. works great. Despite my fancy new head units features I still listen to a lot of fm radio when I drive so fixing this was a must for me.

Now here's an interesting thing. I e-mailed Seicane asking for advice, and have now gone into factory settings - password either 126 or 318, gone to radio, and set this from China to Europe (I'm in the UK). Bingo! It now gets some stations, good enough for what I want to listen to anyway. Hope this helps folk.

No, didn't consider DAB - think you can get a DAB app. for Android though. Fitting the unit should be very straightforward for any car audio shop.