2003 Prius - No Sound From Radio

Hello,

I just bought my first Prius, a 2003 with 218,000 miles. The radio doesn't seem to be working. On FM or AM, it turns on and will scan through channels, but it's not picking up any stations -- it just scans forever. I haven't had a chance to check if the CD or cassette players are working since I don't actually have anything to put in them.

When I start or stop the ignition it makes a fairly loud THUMP sound from the speakers which does not change depending on the volume setting. If I turn the volume knob all the way up I can hear some general electrical interference which does seem to change in accordance with the volume setting.

I feel that I'm qualified to repair the system if it's one of the electronic components, but I'm not familiar enough with this vehicle to understand where the radio is located, what I'd be looking for, or even how to disassemble the dash to remove it.

It does look like a previous owner has removed part of the dash at some point, as I can see some tool marks around the plastic. This Prius does not seem to have a navigation system installed (or if it does, it's broken, because it claims it does not).

Would someone be able to tell me if this is a common problem and point me in the correct direction? This is the newest vehicle I've ever owned, and although I understand the theory behind all of it's systems, it's still new and disorienting for me.

EDIT: I realized after the fact that my post title isn't very accurate. It should probably say something like "2003 Prius - Radio Not Finding Stations". Sorry about that.

 

Hello,

I have confirmed today that the cassette deck and CD player are not working. The cassette slot will not "take" a tape. You can shove it in the slot but it just gets caught loosely in the mechanism (it took me a while to get it back out after that). The CD player will load and unload discs but they will not play, and the system seems completely unaware of what's going on ("NO CD").

I have not had time to look at the connections yet. I hope to be able to get to that tomorrow.

 

I was able to remove the center panel from the dash, but unfortunately the plastic pretty much disintegrated at the slightest touch. Is it possible to order just the plastic bit? I've glued it back together but I'd much rather replace it.

Also, there were no obvious disconnections from the radio, but I haven't had time to poke around any further yet.

 

Well, I figured out what was wrong. Someone has done something terrible to the cassette deck, and it seems to have literally exploded. The metal frame of the cassette loader has been bent and twisted, and part of it was making contact with the PCB in the radio. A couple of components have been broken off the board, and some traces have been broken where the metal has been rubbing against the PCB.

I'm going to try to repair this one (I don't care about the cassette slot), but will probably end up trying to grab one on eBay.

 

Here's the radio after my repair. Normally I would have done a better job, but I already decided to order a new radio on eBay ($40 shipped), so this is just "for fun".

It may look like some of these traces are shorted together, and at least one of them is, but after looking at it for a while I realized that particular trace goes to an unpopulated component, and opted to cut it higher up on the board instead of fussing with making a perfect connection.

I don't know what to put back for the missing SOT-3, so I'm just going to pretend that component has something to do with the cassette player and hope it's not important.

Haven't tested this yet.

 

Radio is working, but learned my 12v battery isn't holding much of a charge. I will try to get a new finish panel since mine is kind of ugly with all the cracks and patches now. I also have a used radio coming, but I'm not taking this thing apart again until I get that panel.

One of these pictures shows all the broken cassette stuff that came out when I shook the radio around.

 

What do I want to order if I want to replace the silver buttons for the air conditioner? You can see in my last pictures that the A/C one is pretty wore out. I found the finish panel but the rest of these options are a bit vague.