I have a panasonic head unit in my truck (its the expensive model with the blue LCD display) and on extended drives, expecially when I have my heat on, it starts to fade until I cant see anything but a blue screen and then the CD player stops working then it just shuts off.

Has anyone had a head unit overheat in a Ranger like this? Does anyone know how to fix it?

 

do you have anything else in you truck, audio-wise... also.. is it a flip down face plate??

i ran into something like that with a headunit once.. the screen went blank, but the music played fine.. then the buttons started to barely work, etc.. then it finally stopped playing.. i took it apart and found the power cable running to the faceplate from the radio itself had come lose inside the faceplate, causing it to barely have any connection.

if you still have it under warrenty, id just send it back, tell them somethings messed up

 

it could be a myriad of things, but its doubtful that its anything that you can fix without replacing the headunit.

Even some of Ford's factory CD6s will overheadt on long roadtrips playing CDs... like it or not, any hardware that uses a freakin' laser is going to get hot over time.

 

It does have a flipdown face plate. Taking it apart wouldnt be a bad idea, one more thing for me to do.

I accually somewhat fixed the problem. That random false vent above the unit comes out, leaving a hole that vents some of the hot air out of dash. Now it works for a little longer before it overheats.