Calzaer
March 3rd, 2004, 10:37 AM
Well then, that was certainly interesting.
I'm driving home this morning from my early class and suddenly my CD player says "Error 60". So I get home, open the trunk to where the 12-disc changer is, and try to eject the cartridge. No good. It whirrs, the disk that was playing goes halfway back into the cartridge, and stops. No eject.
So I dig out the manual and look up "error 60": "Electrical or mechanical fault. Restart ignition or press 'mode' button to cycle through radio, off, and CD player." That's pretty useless - I'd been doing stuff like that all the way home. I'm starting to get a bit frantic now; I just put my brand new Nightwish CD in that cartridge!
So I search the internet. I find one possibly-useful reference - a guy on a car audio newsgroup talking about this same problem. Someone responded that he got it to work again by unplugging the power cable from the changer for 10-15 seconds and then replugging it. Sounds good, I wander back down to the car and give it a shot... but nothing changes.
Allright, time to break out the toolbox. If it won't eject, and the manual won't tell me how to force it to eject, and nobody on the internet knows how to fix it, I'll take the goddamned thing apart and get it out myself. So I take the toolbox out to the car and start to unscrew the mountings... until I find that the CD changer is mounted in such a way as to prevent any screwdriver in the world from getting to three of the mounting screws.
Well, no problem - I have a ratchet and a thousand, um, ratchet-attachment-doohickeys, surely one of them will fit the screw and I can ratchet it out.
No dice. The 7mm doohickey is too big (it turns without turning the screw) and the 6mm doohickey is too small (it won't fit over the screw). How can a screw be sized so that only a 6 1/2mm doohickey would work?? They do this crap on purpose I swear!
So I try to take it apart without unmounting it, but I can't get a good enough view while kneeling on the asphalt and peering into my trunk to find which screws need to come out or even to figure out what size screwdriver I'd need. It was starting to look like all my screwdrivers were a smidge too big or a smidge too small. I think my tools are all in metric and this sucker... isn't.
Finally, out of sheer frustration, I pick up the ratchet and start beating the crap out of the CD changer. After a particularly satisying thwack, it suddenly starts making a new whirring noise and the CD cartridge pops out.
:eyez:
I check my CDs, put the cartridge back in, the changer makes all the appropriate whirring and clicking noises, I climb back into the front seat and give it a shot.. and the CD player works again just fine.
:eyez:
So that brings me to my brand new life philosophy:
When in doubt, smack the SOB harder.
I'm driving home this morning from my early class and suddenly my CD player says "Error 60". So I get home, open the trunk to where the 12-disc changer is, and try to eject the cartridge. No good. It whirrs, the disk that was playing goes halfway back into the cartridge, and stops. No eject.
So I dig out the manual and look up "error 60": "Electrical or mechanical fault. Restart ignition or press 'mode' button to cycle through radio, off, and CD player." That's pretty useless - I'd been doing stuff like that all the way home. I'm starting to get a bit frantic now; I just put my brand new Nightwish CD in that cartridge!
So I search the internet. I find one possibly-useful reference - a guy on a car audio newsgroup talking about this same problem. Someone responded that he got it to work again by unplugging the power cable from the changer for 10-15 seconds and then replugging it. Sounds good, I wander back down to the car and give it a shot... but nothing changes.
Allright, time to break out the toolbox. If it won't eject, and the manual won't tell me how to force it to eject, and nobody on the internet knows how to fix it, I'll take the goddamned thing apart and get it out myself. So I take the toolbox out to the car and start to unscrew the mountings... until I find that the CD changer is mounted in such a way as to prevent any screwdriver in the world from getting to three of the mounting screws.
Well, no problem - I have a ratchet and a thousand, um, ratchet-attachment-doohickeys, surely one of them will fit the screw and I can ratchet it out.
No dice. The 7mm doohickey is too big (it turns without turning the screw) and the 6mm doohickey is too small (it won't fit over the screw). How can a screw be sized so that only a 6 1/2mm doohickey would work?? They do this crap on purpose I swear!
So I try to take it apart without unmounting it, but I can't get a good enough view while kneeling on the asphalt and peering into my trunk to find which screws need to come out or even to figure out what size screwdriver I'd need. It was starting to look like all my screwdrivers were a smidge too big or a smidge too small. I think my tools are all in metric and this sucker... isn't.
Finally, out of sheer frustration, I pick up the ratchet and start beating the crap out of the CD changer. After a particularly satisying thwack, it suddenly starts making a new whirring noise and the CD cartridge pops out.
:eyez:
I check my CDs, put the cartridge back in, the changer makes all the appropriate whirring and clicking noises, I climb back into the front seat and give it a shot.. and the CD player works again just fine.
:eyez:
So that brings me to my brand new life philosophy:
When in doubt, smack the SOB harder.