(no subject)

[growler_south]

Mmm, nice Skyline V30.




Let's pull the dashboard apart!




All this, just to get the radio out. Sheesh.

The stereo had a CD stuck in it, and wasnt giving a fault code, just refusing to eject. I removed it, teased the CD out, and reinstalled it, hoping it would work- it didnt, but at least now it gives an error code rather than just beeping.

Comments

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

This is the main reason I hate those totally-integrated stereo systems. Yeah, they look good, and modern decks sound pretty decent unlike older stuff that was always begging to be upgraded with aftermarket. But things will go wrong, and you are at the mercy of the dealer (or junkyard) for a replacement headunit or amp if there is no way to get deep inside and repair the original. I think 80 percent of CD headunit failures are from the laser dying.

[growler-south.livejournal.com]

Well at least you didnt say the laser being 'out of alignment', one of the oldest myths in history. No such thing- the lasers are quite capable of aligning themselves, and do so thousands of times a second.

The dying laser one's up there though. The laser LEDs are rated for more hours than the carriage can ever see- early lasers became weak, which led to skipping in extreme circumstances, but you'll not see weak lasers killing a modern CD player for at least 10 years. Of constant use. Usually it's dirty optics- amazing how many CD players with 'out of alignment' or 'dead' lasers I've raised from the dead simply by opening it up and cleaning the lenses with alcohol and a Q-tip.

The internet says this particular error is caused by one of the hall-effect sensors giving a dodgy reading. Quite why they changed from microswitches to hall-effect sensors for servo positioning I'll never know- give me old-tech CD players any day- but I suspect it was due to cost. And their cheapness has come back to bite.. the consumer.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I'll grant (hee hee... grant... that's your name) you that a good portion of troubles with CD heads is caused by dirty optics. Not long ago I rescued a deck owned by a friend of mine that had a fine coating of red clay dust - from the long driveway he lives off of - spread just about everywhere in the deck (not to mention the whole interior of the truck). The early units had issues with failing lasers due to operating under high temps. Take an early deck that had hot running innards, stick it in a vehicle sitting in the hot summer sun, and it did not take long for the operating temp of the laser itself to blast past 80C or more. This would cause a degradation in power output, getting to the point where there was just not enough oomph to get a good signal back through the pickup optics. Some units could be saved by gently turning up the laser power (often the only trimpot inside a modern player), but only for a short time.

The mechanicals that drive the sled are often culprits, some cheap units having a simple little leaf switch for detecting the home position of the sled which get dirty or pushed out of alignment, and some makers who insist on using a rubber belt between the sled motor and the rest of the gearing forget that rubber bits like that in a car go bad in relatively short order.

Strange that the hall sensors are being the cause of problems, since the idea behind them was to eliminate mechanical contacts. Some units, even my early Alpine CD unit in the old Dart (the first Alpine unit sold in my state in '85, it even got some mention in a local trade publication) used an optical sensor suite that followed the disk through the loading transport, provided all the home position sensing for the sled and the loading mechanism, and even the status of the drive door. That part was flawless to this day. What did go, almost exactly a year after I bought the thing, was the laser. I had it replaced under warranty, and I fitted the overhead console I made to hold the player (it was only a CD deck, meant to go along with an existing radio/cassette HU) with a 40mm fan to help keep the unit cooled. It helped. The deck still works to this day (unlike the car it's mounted in).

[growler-south.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Rubber belts. I cant think of the number of cassette decks I repaired where all they needed was a new belt- mind you, it was an easy repair so I cant complain too much.

Heh heh- now that shows my age: I used to repair car stereos when that meant cassette. Sweet job, that one, I repaired the ones I could on my own, and the head tech showed me how to fix the rest.

I'm not sure why they say the sensors go bad on these stereos- like you say, they shouldnt fail. Maybe they just had a batch of dodgy ones.