Clarion CMD7 going bad 3 months after purchase?

[BTF112989]

Hey everybody! Ever since this thread went stagnant, I have been driven to the edge of insanity & back with this Clarion stereo. I wired it directly to a battery & got nothing more than I had before. Some days the display would start working again only to cut off 20 minutes later. Some days it wouldn't even eject a cd. It was like it was completely dead. After racking my brain & playing with the stereo forever, as well as going through my install again & again in my head...I figured it out!!!

When I installed it, the back "box" part of the cmd7 unit was a tight fit in the old cmd4 hole. It fit though, so I screwed her down & everything worked. I forgot though that I had to torque down pretty hard on the two left side screws. So, when I was playing with it the other day, I could get the display to cut on and off by screwing and unscrewing those two screws. I pulled the whole radio out of the mounting hole & it worked great!

So, my conclusion is that I should have widened the cmd4 hole just a little bit before installing the new unit. When it was heating up outside, the unit's back "box" would expand just slightly in the already tight hole. This made some circuit inside go haywire I guess. Which explains why it wouldn't work when I pulled it from 55 degree Tennessee to 85 degree Florida. Anyone else experience anything like this?

It also worked great at night when it was cooler.

So I pulled the radio back out, took a file to the edges of the mounting hole, and now the radio's backside has plenty of room to expand!

One more question though: my display cut off this weekend when it was 90 degrees outside. I opened the front seat hatch on the console to get some airflow in there, but the stereo was so hot it almost burned me when I touched the backside. I tried to put a towel over it with no luck. It just seems like in the heat of the day, with the sun beating down, the stereo overheats. My only thought is by a little fan that hooks into my cigarette lighter socket for the hot part of the day. Any ideas?

Thanks everybody!
-Ben

[Blue Agave]

I'd return it.

[flounderpounder225]

Hey everybody! Ever since this thread went stagnant, I have been driven to the edge of insanity & back with this Clarion stereo. I wired it directly to a battery & got nothing more than I had before. Some days the display would start working again only to cut off 20 minutes later. Some days it wouldn't even eject a cd. It was like it was completely dead. After racking my brain & playing with the stereo forever, as well as going through my install again & again in my head...I figured it out!!!

When I installed it, the back "box" part of the cmd7 unit was a tight fit in the old cmd4 hole. It fit though, so I screwed her down & everything worked. I forgot though that I had to torque down pretty hard on the two left side screws. So, when I was playing with it the other day, I could get the display to cut on and off by screwing and unscrewing those two screws. I pulled the whole radio out of the mounting hole & it worked great!

So, my conclusion is that I should have widened the cmd4 hole just a little bit before installing the new unit. When it was heating up outside, the unit's back "box" would expand just slightly in the already tight hole. This made some circuit inside go haywire I guess. Which explains why it wouldn't work when I pulled it from 55 degree Tennessee to 85 degree Florida. Anyone else experience anything like this?

It also worked great at night when it was cooler.

So I pulled the radio back out, took a file to the edges of the mounting hole, and now the radio's backside has plenty of room to expand!

One more question though: my display cut off this weekend when it was 90 degrees outside. I opened the front seat hatch on the console to get some airflow in there, but the stereo was so hot it almost burned me when I touched the backside. I tried to put a towel over it with no luck. It just seems like in the heat of the day, with the sun beating down, the stereo overheats. My only thought is by a little fan that hooks into my cigarette lighter socket for the hot part of the day. Any ideas?Thanks everybody!
-Ben

Too much engineering for a radio, contact clarion, and demand a warranty exchange, you shouldn't have to create a cooling system for your radio, it sounds like it has an internal hight resistance short to a ground potential, that would make it get hotter than normal.