Expert: Cleggsan - 11/2/2008

Question
A friend recently gave me his kenwood. Before i installed it I hooked up straight to the battery. There were no lights or display but the cd motor turned on.I unhooked the power and memory wires one by one. First the power then memory and while the memory wire was still hooked up the motor for the cd player stayed running until I unhooked it. I took the stereo apart to check the board for any short circuits but saw none and didn't have a burn smell to it either. Is it an easy fix or time for a new one

Answer
With only power and no cd it should not run the motor - unless you had a cd in it and it was ready to play.

Here is my suggestion: Power it up to the battery again; connect a stand alone speaker to one of the outputs and see if you can get it working - on cd or tuner, etc.

If it does not work you will need to do some further checking.  Try to determine what works and what doesn't.  If there is no sound coming from the speaker, move it over to another channel and try it.  Try the tuner both AM and FM (you will need some kind of wire in the antenna input to get a signal or at least some white noise).

Then, once you have an idea of what is wrong we can go from there.  For example, if everything works but the cd player you may need an adjustment of the optical pickup assembly or a new laser diode - both of which is relatively expensive to repair.

NOTE: When you hook it up again, connect the ground first; the 12 power line second, the remote last (which turns on the unit).

Let me know for the rest of the story.

C