Spastic Stereo

[Slartibartfast]

The stereo/tape/CD deck in my dad's R50 is twitching out. It periodically freezes up and won't respond to inputs, and when it does this, it refuses to turn off. Turn off the ignition, it's still on. Pull the key out and walk away from the truck, it's still on. The only thing that'll turn it off is pulling the fuse. When we put the fuse back in, it goes back to behaving normally, except that it's forgotten its presets and has to check all its CD slots.

 

I searched around and found some cases of radios staying on in newer vehicles with faults in something called a BCM, but nothing about the radio freezing up. Has anyone had an R50 stereo do this? We'll probably just swap out the head unit, but if there's an easier and cheaper fix, I'd love to hear it.

 

For now I've ghetto rigged it with a Reset button in place of the fuse.

 

[Slartibartfast]

An update on this, for anyone with similar issues: we gave up and bought a new head unit out of the wrecking yard.

 

My dad called a dealership and was told that the stereo on the '03 only was somehow tied into the HVAC system, and therefore had to be replaced with a factory one. We picked up a radio out of a wrecked '03, stuck it in, and found that the wreck had busted some gears in the CD changer. Luckily the changer comes off as a unit, so I just swapped in the good one from the old head. It all works now.

Oh, and I tested the fan one of the times I had the radio out. It worked fine.