My recently acquired 95 Disco 300tdi ES had a broken OEM radio fitted. Quite common, apparently. The buttons fall off and it stops working. Trouble is, it also had a cd082 CD changer fitted, and controlled by the dead radio. I found a new replacement radio head unit on eBay, and judged that if it sold on form, it would be about 50 - 60 squids. I made an appropriate bid and was amazed to see it soar to 165 sovs. Amazing considering it was advertised as 'New but the type where the buttons fall off and it stops working.' After some careful research (ain't Google wonderful?) I discovered that the R741 radio fitted to MGFs around 99 - 2000 should also drive the CD changer. I duly located one on fleabay and won it for a mere 31 squids. The postage was a tad excessive at £15 so I collected it from a nice lady in Rugby and saved about 4p for the 110 mile round trip in the snow! It came complete with fitting cage, manual and code so I was hoping for a result. Time for fitting; it went in with no problems, plugged straight in, including sub woofer power and CD changer. But the changer made no signs of life apart from the radio display acknowledging its existence. Out comes the spanners and soon I have a CD changer on the bench. Unusually it comes apart very easily, no tricky hidden plastic tags or stuck bits. I couldn't find any obvious reason for its lack of function, so I started poking the mechanical bits, as you do, and soon had the CD magazine removed. Plugging it back in sans cover still had no effect. Twisting, shaking and more poking though, soon had it clicking and whirring, and after teaching it how to extract CDs from the mag, I was soon reeling to some ancient Genesis and some more modern Jools Holland. So £31, 110 miles and 2 hours work and a bit of poking about gets me a nice 6CD, cassette, RDS radio setup, complete with a functioning electric aerial. Shame about the dash control buttons not working, but hey, you can't have everything. I know the previous owner of the car and he'd never had the radio working so I guess that the radio had been dead for so long that the CD had just stuck through inaction and the aerial hasn't been used enough to break yet, it does have a slight bend at the bottom of the mast, so I suppose it won't be long before it snaps off like all the others. Next on the list is to fix the wiper parking problem, then the glow plug control circuit, then to figure out how to turn off the fully funtional A/C without having to unplug the compressor clutch circuit. Now of course, after 1500 miles of ownership and it being dry for the first week, the small but irritating oil leaks have started, not least a leak from the clutch hydraulic damper union.
What would happen if I mentioned Vegetable oil? Old chestnuts get thrown at me by any chance?