Haggai
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2003
- Messages
- 3,883
My car stereo's been acting strangely of late, so I was wondering if anyone around here might have any advice. My car is a little over six years old now, with a built in CD/AM-FM-radio stereo. A few weeks ago, upon returning from out of town, the car wouldn't start in the airport parking lot, and after I got a jump, the stereo buttons wouldn't respond. I could still turn the volume and tuning knobs to adjust volume and change the radio station, but the seek and scan buttons didn't work, nor did any of the pre-set stations, or the button to switch between AM and FM. When I put a CD in, it would play it, but I couldn't skip between tracks, and I couldn't even get the CD back out of the player, since the eject button wasn't responding. After I got home that night, I switched the car off and on again, and happily, everything was working OK again with all the stereo's buttons, which stayed that way for the next couple of weeks.
There were one or two more times when the same problems popped up again since then, but it never lasted very long; e.g., I'd get in the car to drive to work and the buttons were all out, but after 5 or 10 minutes they were OK again. But over the last couple of days, they went out and stayed out. This morning, the car wouldn't start again, so when the Triple A guy came out, I went ahead and had him replace the battery (which was old and apparently overdue for replacing). When I was driving in to work, still no response from the stereo. But then, using the old male approach of "smack the hell out of it until it responds" to malfunctioning devices, I did get it to work again. I had tried that yesterday as well, before the battery died, but to no avail. So, I'm hoping that now I've replaced the battery, whatever the problem was is gone--I suspected it was connected with the battery in the first place, since it didn't start up until my battery was dead in the airport parking lot those few weeks ago. I don't really understand how those issues would be connected--any thoughts from anyone around here? I hope the stereo issues are gone now, so that I don't have to have it worked on or replaced. I had never had any problems like that with it over the past six years.
There were one or two more times when the same problems popped up again since then, but it never lasted very long; e.g., I'd get in the car to drive to work and the buttons were all out, but after 5 or 10 minutes they were OK again. But over the last couple of days, they went out and stayed out. This morning, the car wouldn't start again, so when the Triple A guy came out, I went ahead and had him replace the battery (which was old and apparently overdue for replacing). When I was driving in to work, still no response from the stereo. But then, using the old male approach of "smack the hell out of it until it responds" to malfunctioning devices, I did get it to work again. I had tried that yesterday as well, before the battery died, but to no avail. So, I'm hoping that now I've replaced the battery, whatever the problem was is gone--I suspected it was connected with the battery in the first place, since it didn't start up until my battery was dead in the airport parking lot those few weeks ago. I don't really understand how those issues would be connected--any thoughts from anyone around here? I hope the stereo issues are gone now, so that I don't have to have it worked on or replaced. I had never had any problems like that with it over the past six years.