Car Audio Experts: a couple of questions.

Factual Questions
1

I was given a used CD deck for free, but the thing is it doesnt either accept of eject CDs, I can’t remeber which one. anyways I am hoping that I can fix it myself.i dont want to pay to have it installed only to find out it is unfixale or whatever. I was wondering:

!) can i hook it up by simply cutting off the existing plastic plug thing with all the colored wires coming out of it (is this thing called the wiring harness?) and connecting all like colored wires with the plug still sticking out of the deck? Will doing so give me power, there fore allowing me to mess around with it a try to identify the source of the problem?

also:

  1. does anyone know what some possible reasons for the malfuncion may be and some suggested solutions?

Thanks All.

2

  1. There is no one standard for wiring colors. Connecting wires by color alone is a really good way to make smoke.

  2. Not much to go on from your description. It could be a mechanical problem, which will likely be really difficult to fix yourself, or it could be something as simple as dirt covering the lens of a photodetector used to sense the presence of a CD. Given the compact nature of the device, and your relative inexperience with fixing electrical devices (which I assume based on your question 1), your chances of fixing it aren’t good.

3

You could certainly hook it directly up to a car battery just to get the power to play with it. I wouldn`t start tearing up the wiring harness just to see if it works or not.
Fixing one may not be all that wise when new ones are around $50 - $100 (for the cheap ones).

4

Thanks for the replies guys. im glad i didnt just haphazardly start cutting wires.

Whuck: how would i go about doing that? the car battary thing.

I realize the chances of fixing it are slim but id like to give it a shot before i spend any of my sweaty stinky cash. I at least want to confirm that there is anything actually wrong with this thing. Thanks again for the advice.

Anymore suggestions from anyone?

5

Youll have to know which wire is the Hot (usually the red with the fusible link) and which is the ground (usually black). You may also have to connect the remote activation wire. This wire is commonly the orange wire and is used to let the stereo know when the car antennae is up, or it can be the wire that is switched to turn on the stereo. If you dont use this feature then you should just hook the orange wire up to the hot (red).

So, you have the orange and red going to the +(positive) on the car battery and the black going to the - (negative) on the car battery. You should be able to play with it at this point.
To connect them to the battery you could just strip back enough of the insulation on the wires and then clamp them on the battery terminals with a clothes pin or something similar.

6

Don’t cut the green one. Oh wait, that’s for bombs.

7

“shoot the hostage”. oops, that’s another bomb one. my bad.