jstanfi1

iTrader: (2)

I have a 1992 Delco CD player factory stereo that I installed in my 1992 Firebird 7 or 8 years ago. It was professionally rebuilt when I purchased it, and had an aux port added, and it's never been any sort of an issue until last year. There's an inline compact 4 channel Kenwood amp installed between the factory speakers and the headunit, and the car does not have any sort of amplifier or external controls of its own.

Now, the headunit regularly "freezes up." Symptoms:
1) The time shows when the headunit is "off", but it never changes from the time it was on when it froze.
2) When the power button is pushed, the headunit screen changes to whatever it was last on and displays either the radio station or CD track, along with the volume setting, but nothing plays.
3) When froze, the headunit does not respond to any kind of button presses other than the power button changing it from the frozen clock to the frozen station/track display.
4) Regardless of radio or CD, the power antenna does not turn on.

I've checked every fuse I can think of multiple times (but am up for suggestions of what to check again!), have disconnected the external amp, and checked for any loose wiring connections from the splicing to the external amp years ago, even replacing a few I thought were sloppy for good measure. Usually, pulling the battery cables for 10 minutes fixes it, but not always. I had to do so today, and it might be good for months now, or it may be froze in the morning.

I've scoured the internet for anything like this and have come up empty. Any ideas?

John in RI

iTrader: (167)

1st guess: sounds like the "Receiver" part of your head-unit is the problem. You can replace just the receiver part of your radio with a CDM type receiver from many other 89-94 cars/trucks,... just be sure that the replacement receiver it is an Equalizer type receiver. Sadly - by doing this you will loose the AUX jack.

Antenna issue might be an antenna specific problem and unrelated to the head-unit.

Depending on how 'plug-play' the system was first installed: might not be a bad idea to unplug the AMP from the rest of the system to see how the head-unit controls everything with the AMP removed entirely. There's no way for anyone - other than you - to see/know how the AMP is wired in and any suggestions we post will be based on the wiring being run in a factory original manner. Your lack of output might be due to the head unit receiver,.. or because there's no output from the AMP.

Still think the receiver is the problem - but it's still just an educated guess.