I have had 2 XJ6s that had radios that either did not work or worked intermittently. I decided to take one of them apart (from my car I am parting out) and take a look inside. First thing I noticed was the ground stud on the back plate (which is the heat sink for the amplifier sections) was not tight. It is just a bolt with a washer that is threaded through the back plate. I threaded the bolt quite a few turns further in till it stopped. The other radio had the exact same loose ground stud.

After taking the rest of the radio apart, blowing out the interior case with compressed air to get rid of dust, especially at the rear of the unit, I cleaned all of the small buttons and on-off rotary switch with electrical contact cleaner. All of the controls are exposed when the plastic face plate is removed. I sprayed the shaft on the on-off switch quite a few times while rotating the shaft and pushing it in and out. I did the same with the little control buttons.

I did not see any swollen capacitors or any other visible damage. I did resolder two questionable connections on the steel face plate that appeared to be ground connections. I also cleaned the tape head that I will never use.

When you remove the radio there is a ground stud right behind it that has quite a few wires going to it that also needed to be retightened.

While I had the console taken apart I thought I would replace the burned out lightbulb that illuminates the shifter background. I found out that it was easier to replace the bulb if you first pushed down on the bulb holder and removed it, install the bulb and pushed it back in.

I was also going to replace the bulb for the sport switch but I found out it was not a normal bulb, I think they call them grain of wheat?

So after all that,
I was very happy that the radio worked great, all the buttons and switches work correctly and the CD player worked great. I have had this car for about a year now and I had never heard the CD player work since the radio was so screwed up. Time will tell if the repair lasts, but for now I have tunes!

 

That ground stud on the back of the head unit will also make all your interior console/IP/Door switch lights flash or become inoperative. In my case, the stud was tight, but the wire grounded to it on the back of the head was a bit loose.

Any clue what bulb is needed for illumination of the display in the head unit? I've got a dark one or two. (radios)

 

125/1000 inch width after color lens cover removal or 3.175 mm

12v Bulb - grain of rice/wheat | ELF Miniatures




Grain of Wheat Bulbs | eBay

 

Radio is still working great but then I heard this weird grinding noise from the antenna motor. Thanks to the Forum I discovered that a part of the toothed nylon strap that pulls the antenna up and down had broken off inside the motor. I removed the antenna along with what was left of the strap and put a little plastic plug in the hole so the rain does not get in.

I can still pick up some strong local radio stations even with the antenna gone. I am going to order the replacement mast this weekend and take the motor apart clean, regrease and remove what is left of the nylon.

I think you have to have a sense of humor to own these cars, just when you think you have something fixed, something else goes bad. Oh well, the parts are getting old and need replacement.

 

No audio sound from passenger side speakers i would think that maybe a fuse or a relay need replacement but not sure which one if any.

 

Jagdogme , are you referring to yours and do you have the premium setup or the standard which shares the same Alpine / Jaguar AJ9500A control head . If you have the VDP you ( most likely ) have the premium that has a final power amp under the rear hat shelf and a CD player . Otherwise the final amplifier in the standard setup is in the head unit and is a Toshiba TA8221 component easy to change out , no relays . Or it could be the volume switch as it has 2 channels for the 2 left and right chip amplifiers . There is a pin difference between the TA8221 AH and AL

 

I bought a replacement mast from Amazon that seemed to be of decent quality. I took the motor apart, removed what was left of the nylon strap cleaned and regreased all the gears inside. There were no signs of internal wear on any of the gears or other parts.

One mistake I did make on removing the antenna motor from the trunk was trying to pry off the drain hose on the bottom of the assembly. It broke the plastic barb off inside the clear vinyl drain tube. Do not try to pry this off, it will break! I tried to pull the whole assembly out as a unit but the vinyl drain tube was stuck in the grommet in the trunk. I thought maybe it was clamped somewhere underneath the trunk. Wrong! A little spray lube on the grommet and the clear tube pulled out easily.

The tube had not been moved in over 20 years and was just stuck. I did manage to glue the tube back in place on the bottom of the motor but it did **** me off that I had broken something in a repair that otherwise went well because of my mistake.

 

Tread carefully, not ALL VDP's were equipped with premium sound.

 

Replacing AMPs in the radio is definitely not easy, you need experience in component soldering, ideally a hot air gun too and more experience to, there is a 0 chance pretty much than average Joe would be able to do it.

 

The consideration would be overheating the IC delicate components .

 

Thanks Lady P. I have never seen that before.

 

You can always tent the plastic device with aluminum foil to protect from heat but the concern is the heat wicking into the inside components . Going to keep the headers ? I'm going to try a repair mine using bicycle spokes as a repair I fabricated and mapped out as a first try .

 

I still have to remove the manifolds, unfortunately the vehicle is outside and the weather has turned really cold here. I will have to be careful doing this, jacking it up on the passenger side. The car is sitting in a dirt field so I will have to put down some plywood for the jack and a jackstand. I have a cordless 3/8 driver that I will try to use, I just have to come up with the right combination of extensions to get this done.

 

The radio had been working great until yesterday when it would not turn on. I thought maybe I had blown a fuse or the harness plug in the back of the unit had come loose. It came back on today but no control of any function.

I decided to clean the contacts again on the on-off rotary main button. I pried the button off using a miniature screwdriver and then put several drops of contact cleaner on the shaft while pushing the shaft in and out and rotating. The shaft has a little vertical play built into it and moving it back and forth let the cleaner flow into it better. After doing this multiple times for about 5 minutes the radio now works again.

The main problem I have found in these radios is dirty contacts in the power button. I am glad I managed to get it working again without having to remove the radio. I will see how long it lasts this time

 

I found a new on / off volume switch to replace it as it shouldn't be too hard to replace . There is a industry name for the switch I can't recall but I do have a pic somewhere in my files .

Encoder is the name . Shaft dimensions important .