Please Help!! - CD Changer

[dynamicA498]

I have 98.5 A4 V6 Quattro 30v, with the 'concert' stereo system. Well one day the head unit stopped recognizing the cd changer. The cd changer is hooked up and will eject and load the cartridge, and go through the cd's, but when I press "mode" on the head unit, it never goes to Cd cuz it think there's not any in there. What can I do?

 

[rasA4]

have you checked the connections behind the HU?

 

[dynamicA498]

Well I popped open my fusebox, to see if anything had blown, and pulled out every one and checked it. and I've had my cd changer disconnected for the past 2 days, because it wasn't working anyway. So after the fuse checking, I hooked it back up, and then it finally recognized the CD Changer. Before nothing would happen when i hit "mode". I'm afraid to change the CD's though, for fear that it won't work again!

 

[Lowlife]

Are you sure its not the laser? My changers had it, sometimes it won't recognise that theres a cd in there, other times it plays but skips and jumps like mad...

 

[dynamicA498]

Maybe, would a "head cleaning" cd clear that up?

 

[shineydave]

cd changer isn't wet is it?

 

[dynamicA498]

no my trunk's totally dry. It feels like a problem with the HU, because for a while it just wouldn't even try to recognize it. Then when it started working again, even if there were no CDs in there, it would say "no cd".

 

[sun and kath]

When i bought my car, the cd changer was exactly the same, the cassette would eject, cds would wizz round, but the head unit failed to recognise.

Turned out (after many hours fiddling) that there was aseparate earth wire, not bunched up with the rest, and this had come off were it is secured to the body, as soon as I earthed this separate wire it worked fine.
It was earthed by one of the bolts holding the boot trim.

May be you could try checking this earth is tight?

 

[dynamicA498]

By earth you mean, ground right?

 

[sun and kath]

Yes I do mean ground. If you take the CD unit out , I found the wire, I think it was taped to the loom at first then broke off in its own before the conector to the rest of the wiring loom, follow it and check it is earthed/ grounded. I think mine even had a sticker saying to make sure it was gounded - I wounder if the CD (6 stack) may have beed a dealer fitment.

 

[dynamicA498]

Ya my cd changer is factory fitted I beleive.

 

[dynamicA498]

Ok so I disconnected the changer, and I disconnected the changer from the head unit, and replugged in, and it still doesn't work. entered in my radiio code, still nothing. So this means that the CD changer is faulty, or the harness is faulty. Does anyone have any recommendations of a quality cd deck to replace the factory radio head unit with? Or is that not a good idea to do with Audis? I was thinking like a nice Alpine or Infinty deck or something. eh?

 

[sun and kath]

did you actually take the cd changer out? to check if the separate earth wire was there or not?

 

[dynamicA498]

well there is only one plug comming from the changer, and it goes straight to the harness? Do you mean take the head unit out, and see if there is an earth wire to it? I'm sure there is, you're saying it might be loose or something? Did yours say "NO CDC" when you tried to start it up with the cd changer?

what about getting a regular cd deck to fit in there? is that bad?

 

[sun and kath]

Sorry - can't remember what the display said.
It was the cd changer i took out, the earth wire that seemed separate from the rest of the loom came from the changer. It was not connected to the plug then to the rest of the loom, but made its own way to an earthing point as i described.