nothing works

[bigneilsen]

today as i was taking out my dash (VT exec) i didnt know that the radio had to be taken out before the dash will come out, so here i am ripping at it thinking there was a stubborn clip that just wasnt coming loose

getting frustrated i ripped it one last time really hard, i had broken the plastic around the screw that holds the head unit in (STOCK HEADUNIT). i thought it wasnt that bad i pushed the unit back a little as it came foward. it sits just like normal but i turned the car on and now nothing on the headunit will work. i cant even turn it off to make it worse its not really at a quiet level lol

anyways does anyone know what could be the problem? i think itd be very unlikley i riped a wire or anything, i dont know much about electricals or audio ****, any help would be greatly appreciated

first post

[holdenboy]

You could always remove the head-unit, unplug the wires then wait a few seconds and plug them back in, this effectively resets the unit...

Hopefully this will work, otherwise you may need another unit.

Good luck anyways mate.

[ImAHoon!]

I'm guessing the face on the headunit has been pulled forward, so none of the buttons are actually making contact.

[bigneilsen]

yeah im in the middle of buying the headunit removal tool off ebay now, hopefully itll just need to get put back in properly.

kinda wanted a new headunit anyways. lol

[XeKToReX]

4 bits of a coat hanger works a treat

[danja]

Or even two U shaped bits

[bigneilsen]

haha shoulda asked about that before i bought the tool.

is it hard to change my headunit? ive got no prior knoweldge about this stuff

[danja]

It's not rocket science, and if you're willing to learn its fairly straightforward.

Basically there's a bunch of wires going into your stock head unit. Each wire does a different thing (power, speakers, electric antenna etc.) They're all different colours so you can tell them apart.

The new head unit will need to connect to most or all of these wires, it's a case of working out which colour on the old one goes to which colour on the new one, then soldering or otherwise joining them together.

Car audio is pretty open ended, so I haven't gone into great detail here, but thats the basic idea.. Google some "how-to's", there's heaps of good info out there.

[Pimpn1]

or I'm sure you can buy an adapter to play into factory plugs then wire to stereo, red power, yellow accessories, black earth, blue elect antenna, then probable green, purple, white, Grey for speakers, or different colours

[Phreddy]

It's most likely that you've cracked the circuit board behind the faceplate of the unit. Yes, there's a circuit board behind all that plastic and buttons. It's not particularly rigid material, and it has copper "tracks" all over it to form electrical connections. If the board cracks, so do the copper traces and the connections are broken.

If that's the case you can really write off the head unit. You won't get spares for it, I guarantee that. You might find a cheap one for sale of eBay or summink.

Seriously though Mate, if you're pulling on something and it won't come - you need to look at WHY, not just yank on it harder. Modern cars are made of plastic and clips, with the odd screw here and there. If you pull the right screws out, it should all be relatively easy to remove. If it isn't, there's usually a good reason for it.

Anyhow - my strongest recommendation is to remove the factory unit anyway, and install something a bit better. You can get adaptor housings to fill the gap if you put a "single DIN" unit in there (the existing is "Double DIN"), and as cool vr said you can get an adaptor harness to plug from the unit to the factory wiring. (although my preference is to splice into the wiring and solder, the way Danja suggested)

If you're friendly with someone who has a reasonable grasp of this stuff I'm sure you could get a little help. It's not all that complicated, but it can be daunting if you've never done it before. (not to mention you can indeed do some damage if you screw it up...)

Whatever you do, if you want a "professional" to install it, DON'T go to Stratho's or JB. Although there is the odd exception, those blokes are the furthest thing from "professional" by my standards.

Cheerz!

[danja]

Whatever you do, if you want a "professional" to install it, DON'T go to Stratho's or JB. Although there is the odd exception, those blokes are the furthest thing from "professional" by my standards.

Amen to that! Well...unless you want every other clip in your car broken and the steering wheel held on with duct tape.

As it happens, I think I still have my old VT Eurovox (stock) deck in a box somewhere, if anyone wants it it's yours for the price of postage.