Stock Radio Issues

Sometime last year my wife took my truck for some days to move crap around. When I got it back, she told me the radio stopped working. One of my CDs got stuck in it and it won't turn on. After letting it sit for a while, it started working again... But, if hit a hard bump, especially while making a right turn, the radio would make a loud pop and cut out. It would be out of commission for a while then magically start working again.

Fast forward a few weeks and I start getting the itch to get a new truck. (Mind you I bought this one new in 2003 and was eyeing the 3rd generation Tacoma - which you can see I ended up getting.) Anyway, I was pretty frustrated with the radio. Do I get a new radio? It will need one if I sell the truck so I started looking into it... very reluctantly. Before buying anything, I decided to take it apart and see if I could fix it. It sounded an awful lot like loose harness or something like that.

I found this lengthy video on YouTube for dismantling the dash to get it out. I pushed in all the wire harnesses and the radio still didn't work. Admitting defeat, I decided to pull it out and start shopping for a replacement. As I disconnect it, my dash in tatters, I hand it to my brother and ask him to hold it, when all of a sudden I hear a plink! A goddamn penny falls out of the CD slot. It was shorting out the radio Everytime I hit a bump. I guess there was some exposed wiring on the left side that the right turns caused the penny to shift over that way.

Plugged it back in and it's been working like a champ ever since. Moral of the story: don't let your wife leave your two year old alone in your car!!!

 

P. S. I still own this truck. It's like a part of the family. Probably will part with it at some point, but I've never had a more reliable car than that truck.

 

Here it is...

 

Now that's one helluva fix - and you got a penny out of it to boot ! Sure is a lot cheaper than $350 for a new radio or $35,000 for a new truck...

 

haha, funny story. Glad you managed to find what was causing it

Reminds me of the time a squirrel built a nest in my muffler...

 

Oh I've got two stories like that. The funniest one was when I was parked out next to a construction trash pile. (We are building a house.) I was stopped for no more than ten minutes, checking something on my phone, when I see a chipmunk run up under my truck and then the horrible sound of little rodent feet inside the ductwork. Having had to deal with a dead mouse in my AC before, I didn't want to deal with a dead chipmunk. I knew he was building a stock pile, so I waited until he left, and drove off about thirty feet. I proceed to look up whatever it was on my phone when I hear a constant beeping noise.

WTF? What's beeping. The truck was parked and it was faint, so I opened the window and the beeping got louder. It was the chipmunk yelling at me from a tree. Beep! Ever wonder what sound an angry chipmunk makes? Beep!

Also, FYI, squirrels go PEW! LOL!