I’ve had two different adapters for the cassette player in my car, that I could plug into my mp3 player. And in two different cars, they’ve behaved the same way—the cassette randomly ejects itself. It might play for 20 minutes or a half hour, or it might play for two minutes. Sometimes it immediately ejects after I put it in, and I’ll have to try three or four times. Anyone had any luck with these things, or know why it’s doing this?
Automotive cassette players are some of the most advanced cassette players ever made. They usually have a lot of features built in to not damage cassettes. (Because they are so hard to remove, among other reasons)
It does this when the spindle spins too easily or becomes too difficult to spin. If it spins freely, the tape play may assume the tape broke. If it spins too difficultly the tape player stops to not damage the tape.
I’ve had this experience too, and it seemed to get worse as the car (and its cassette player) got older. In my previous car, it used to work fine, but after I’d had it a few years, it got so cranky it’d do this with all cassettes, essentially rendering the cassette player useless. The car I have now plays most tapes fine (so far—cross fingers) but does the ejecty thing with some, including the mp3 adapters I’ve tried.
You’ve probably already tried this, and even if you haven’t it may not help, but: Have you tried pushing the Side 1/Side 2 button to change the direction the spindles turn on the player?
that’s what I have to do—as soon as I notice it’s about to eject, if I can hit that button quickly and save it.