'96 1500 external/slave factory CD player: my experience w/repair...almost a joke...

[DennisT]

My recently purchased high mileage 1996 GMC 1500 has the, "upper end," AM/FM, Cassette, CD player system. All works good except slave CD player just displayed, "err." Got one from junk yard; same result. Swapped them for a second used one. Works beautifully but won't eject. Junk yard owner told me no problem if I wanted to look into it. I've worked on more than one thing electrical/electronics, so here I go.
First, the 6 tabs to release plastic front all broke except 2. And I was exceptionally careful, seeing they were flimsy thin. Very gentle. Nope. Just like the plastic was crystallized. No strength there at all. Looking farther, I found the tiny mini switch behind the eject button was almost always open in spite of how many times one pushed the, "button," out front. There are also two bulbs in that front too...both burned out. The front eject button merely presses on a circuit board mounted mini switch, so tolerances are very tight. Replacement mini switch would/will have to have almost exact dimensions to all work together. Internally, the CD player doesn't look bad for construction. So being dead in the water at the moment, I'll either go looking to swap for another unit, again, or.......... continue looking for CD parts. Posting this primarily to say the plastic fronts of these make them almost worthless to repair. Yes, I know Crutchfield will fix me right up with modern unit, but I was 'kinda hoping for factory radio success. We'll see. Anyone else try fixing one of these? Ha......

 

[SUBURBAN5]

Nope.. always wanted one but I figured it be like working on a bomb. Guess you were too rough lol jk

 

[GMCTruck]

I installed a factory CD player in my 95 K1500 four years ago. I picked up 3 CD players at the pick n pull, i think for 10 bucks each and the factory wire harness that goes between the head and CDP. I actually don't remember having much trouble removing the plastic front cover. I replaced all the bulbs with T1 bulbs from Mouser;

https://www.mouser.ca/ProductDetail/JKL-Components/7219?qs=Xy34DXS8EhasFVwWUc6rig==

The tricky part was getting the wire harness to feed through the spaces in the plastic moulding behind the radio. I ended up removing the wires from one connector, taping them together along with a thin wire and then feeding that through the space and pulling it through and then putting the wires back into the connector. CDP still works.

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[HotWheelsBurban]

We had a good electronics repair shop in the area we used to live in; they rebuilt many car stereos for us as the owner's son had been to Delco school. He rebuilt the head unit and CD player in our other 99 Burb. It still worked when that Burb got wrecked, so I'll put it in the current one eventually. Its units work... sometimes, if you don't go on too many bumpy roads. This guy said that all the soldered bits come apart eventually because they're really not designed to be bouncing around in a truck. Once Delco runs out of parts they aren't repairable anymore.....

 

[DennisT]

Thank you. GMCTruck, thanks for the bulb source tip. I just ordered some. I've ordered from Mouser before, but not for a long time. I think the CD unit I'm trying to work on came from a truck that lived all it's life in very hot climates. That plastic is the most brittle I've ever seen. To nudge the faceplate clips I was only gently working thin card squares under the edge. ANY movement on that plastic caused it to crumble.

 

[someotherguy]

When I bought my '06 it had an aftermarket deck that sounded horrible because my truck has the Bose setup and as far as I can tell, aftermarket decks are a bad swap in those trucks because the speaker impedance is odd, Bose setup uses its own amp (and dsp?) etc.

So yeah, I spent too much ($265, back in 2018) on eBay for a factory Bose 6 CD - from a seller that offers 1 year warranty on their "like new take-out" units. Only 9 months after I got it, it began giving disc read errors and ejecting the disc, then would go through all of them unable to read. Write the seller - they want $120 to replace the CD mechanism. Some warranty yeah? This is what you can expect from sellers that have this clause in their ads: "Warranty void if disparaging comments (non-positive) are disseminated or publicized."

Hey, it sounds OK when it plays, though.

Richard

 

[GMCTruck]

Thank you. GMCTruck, thanks for the bulb source tip. I just ordered some. I've ordered from Mouser before, but not for a long time. I think the CD unit I'm trying to work on came from a truck that lived all it's life in very hot climates. That plastic is the most brittle I've ever seen. To nudge the faceplate clips I was only gently working thin card squares under the edge. ANY movement on that plastic caused it to crumble.

The leads on those bulbs are long and very thin. I trimmed them down to a reasonable 1/2" or so to start with. I used some desolder wick to remove the old bulbs and open up the holes and then used fresh solder. Don't linger too long with your iron as I think it would be easy to damage the filament. I think that there are only three bulbs on the CDP. I grabbed the radio pigtail at the pick n pull as well so I could bench test the CDP and also test that the bulbs worked BEFORE i installed the unit.
Good Luck with your repair.

 

[DennisT]

Good tips. Before retirement I used to work in Telco. We often changed circuit board components, so I still have a Solder-Sucker and solder wick. I've thought about grabbing a pigtail feed cable for this too, but didn't think I would know which wire pair fed voltage. Maybe it's obvious??? I figured on checking bulbs with ohm meter before re-installing. These original radio/sound systems that old are always potentially problematic. In the past I've just purchased new stereo units and put them in. Almost as cheap. Not sure why I seem to be stuck on getting this original stuff working......exercise to see if I can even do it maybe.......

 

[someotherguy]

I installed a factory CD player in my 95 K1500 four years ago. I picked up 3 CD players at the pick n pull, i think for 10 bucks each and the factory wire harness that goes between the head and CDP. I actually don't remember having much trouble removing the plastic front cover. I replaced all the bulbs with T1 bulbs from Mouser;

https://www.mouser.ca/ProductDetail/JKL-Components/7219?qs=Xy34DXS8EhasFVwWUc6rig==

The tricky part was getting the wire harness to feed through the spaces in the plastic moulding behind the radio. I ended up removing the wires from one connector, taping them together along with a thin wire and then feeding that through the space and pulling it through and then putting the wires back into the connector. CDP still works.

By the way, those 7219 bulbs can be had from many sources (of course) so if you aren't already ordering from Mouser you could save a few bucks on shipping and get 'em from Bezos with free Prime shipping. I've still got a pack of ten (CEC 7219) for $9 sitting on my desk for when I get around to fixing a few random little bulbs out on my '06.

Richard

 

[someotherguy]

Thank you. GMCTruck, thanks for the bulb source tip. I just ordered some. I've ordered from Mouser before, but not for a long time. I think the CD unit I'm trying to work on came from a truck that lived all it's life in very hot climates. That plastic is the most brittle I've ever seen. To nudge the faceplate clips I was only gently working thin card squares under the edge. ANY movement on that plastic caused it to crumble.

It's sad how much of this plastic stuff isn't going to survive. I always warn people about pulling the 95-up A/C controls because the tabs on them are super brittle the same way.

Richard