Hi -

After progressively weaker and weaker performance/reliability, I'm happy to report I now have a working CD changer and can finally dispense with the pile of cassette tapes I've been buying from the thrift stores.

My changer, while able to play #1 CD fairly consistently would often get confused on subsequent disks, especially if I switched the car off - that was almost a guarantee of an E-02 error, requiring me to open the trunk, eject the cartridge and re-insert if I wanted music again. Not exactly convenient!

Reading the on-line fixes, the most referred to and detailed link applied to a different model than our XJ40 unit. The "fix" involved re-positioning a small motor and worm drive, and as far as I could see didn't apply to the Apline units we have on the 40. Even with the "fix" advice, most posters didn't bother and bought another changer from eBay.

With replacement in mind, I bit the bullet and headed over to the local wrecking yard where I found a beat up (no door, cracked plastic fascia) unit in the trunk of an '92.
The yard owner said I could have it for $40 as it was in such a state, but at that price, no returns ...so I thought I might as well hook it up in the yard and check it before splashing out 40 bucks on a piece of junk.

A simple swap of the din plug and the unit powered up. I loaded the cartridge and it selected each disk in turn, selecting and rejecting that is ... Nothing played, it just cycled through the disks, inserting one after the other in a never ending loop. Yard owner says - oh well, it doesn't work either, take it and see if you can do anything with it. No charge.

On the bench, back at home, I removed the covers and had a look at the guts of the changer - it was a bit dusty, but pretty clean inside. These Alpine units are quite robust - IMHO troubles usually come from dirty lenses and lack of lubrication.

All I did to the defective unit was to give it a good overall spray with a can of duster, followed by a few puffs of contact cleaner then cleaned the lens with alcohol/q-tip and re-lubricated all the gears, shafts and lens assembly track rails with a small amount of white lithium spray-grease applied with a toothpick.

With just the bottom plate fitted, I hooked it up to the car and after my "servicing", to my surprise it worked just like new!

Reassembled the unit using my original fascia etc and all is good. I'm sure the original unit would have worked too if I'd gone through the same process - and now have a spare!

If your unit is giving you grief, give this a try, who knows, you might be lucky too!

Larry

 

Awesome! Great work and you certainly can't beat Free.

Am I wrong, or is the changer supposed to cycle through all the discs when you first apply power to it to see which slots are loaded and which are empty?

My '92 and '96 came with the same Alpine changer. The '92 changer worked fine but wouldn't read Burnt CD-R's correctly, they would all skip and sound funny, but the discs were all new.

The '96 changer wouldn't do anything at all, even when plugged into my '92. Something wrong with the power supply or motors, or fuse or something.

The '96 stock headunit was very troublesome, with backlight bulbs failing all the time, buttons that didn't work, and a volume knob that was unresponsive during certain temperatures.

I swapped both out for JVC Arsenal head units from Crutchfield, they have great power, infinitely variable color for the buttons and display (to match with the dash) and have front and rear USB ports (I ran both rear USB ports to the center cubby for iPods) and have Bluetooth and HD Radio.

I couldn't be happier with them, and taking out the Changers gives me some much needed height in the trunk for the '96!

Thanks again Lawrence! I did keep everything, and used adapters on the wiring so I can go back to stock if need be. I may need this info down the road

Nick

 

Nick, quick tip on doing burns and compatability - My Win7 burner in the Dell burns fine but the changer has a hard time with reading them (or used to; I'll check later on today) - however, the burner in my XP machine is an old IDE replacement from a junk pile at the computer store burns CD's that play just fine. I burn them slow and add the 2 secs ...if I burn w/out the 2 secs, not so good.

A guy told me (hearsay; might be BS) that the burners in the old drives are stronger and burn deeper, so might be worth a shot to pick up an old drive and stick it in that relic you're using with your JDS

just kidding

all the best

Larry