I figured id post this as i go with no absolute guarantee just yet but, it might help anybody out there who has a radio with a flip style face or lcd thats failing, long story short a good friend of mine gave me this radio about 4 years or so ago... because it didn't work, at the time i didn't quite have the finesse for taking things apart and testing to find and fix problems.

Being such a cool radio for its time i really wanted to see it working again.


Anyway, i had almost all day at work today to open up and see what i could find, i searched and searched for annnny possible obvious sign of damage or board component failure, i had all the obvious power/ground connections from the wiring down to the main circuit board but never got that familiar buzzing of the cd motor or anything but had power and ground to the motor as well, i just before i deemed it to be beyond my abilities i figured why not check one last thing and when checking for continuity between the faceplate contacts and the flexible ribbon cable at the board i found over half of them wernt making contact, i removed it and as i figured there was a tear through half the ribbon.

So i removed it, and found some spare cat5 cable and made some jumpers between the board and the faceplate and being cat5 it wasnt very flexible and not the best choice of test wire, but either way i at least was able to get some movement on the faceplate, it zipped right back to its closed position and gave me some reassurance.

I found the replacement ribbon and faceplate contact piece on ebay for 27$ shipped, went ahead and ordered one, cant believe its so much for a cheap piece of plastic with some copper slivers in it but whatever, i really believe that's all it was the entire time. apparently its a really common problems with all kinds of headunits like this.


Ill post some pictures of the process tomorrow, i didn't really expect the outcome to be this positive yet but anyone with a radio that has movement like that, if you start seeing intermittent problems its a good place to start looking that anyone with a screwdriver and some patience could replace for a lot less then a repair center, provided its already out of warranty.

I will post the outcome once the cable arrives, it should only take a few days and ill hopefully have this thing working like a champ again by the weekend.