A Kenwood head unit with cassette and CD changer controls came in my 89 GTA when I bought it. I added a CD changer later and it has all worked good for the last year and a half. However a while back I had a problem, the lights all went out on the display. The buttons all worked and CD's still played, I just couldn't see anything. The HU is the kind that flips when you turn the car off, and I found that when I ejected a tape and the face flipped half way the lights would all come back on in the flipped position but then go out when it came back down to its normal postion.
All this was no problem until last friday, now the HU is completely unresponsive to anything. Since the last thing I was playing was a CD it is stuck in CD mode and it plays them just fine, only that it plays through each entire cd one song after another. I have no way to adjust the volume or switch tracks or cd's. The only way I got it to stop was to take out the cd magazine.
I hate to have to buy a new reciever since mine is a pretty nice one and the amber lights it used to have matched my dash perfectly. The number on it is KRC703.
If anybody knows what it might be and what i could buy or do to fix it It would help alot.
Thanks

The contacts may have gotten dirty between the faceplate and the actual deck, you could try cleaning them with either a pencil eraser and/or rubbing alcohol. If that doesn't work, I'd try to hit the reset button on the front panel of the deck before starting to panic but then I'd start to question that the face plate may have gone bad or the deck itself. Maybe you can go to a local store and try their face plate from a show model that they know is good? Just random thoughts/ideas...

Thanks for the suggestion, but the thing is that my faceplate doesn't detach from the head unit, it has a little motor that flips the face over when the car is off to hide it. The back of the face is just black plastic. I took the whole thing out the other day to look for contacts somewhere and I believe its controlled by something like a ribbon wire that runs from the bottom of the face to the deck. I'm not sure, I think I'm just going to have to take it to a repair shop or something to find out what is wrong.

wow, what is it with kenwoods and not lighting up all of a sudden, i thought it was just me