Today on the way to work, I had a bunch of scratchy crap on AM on the radio. This is normal on my truck radio and when I put it on FM it is perfectly clear. I was listening to the morning talk radio station on AM and had to bump the stereo like normal to keep it from being noisy. The noise was always generated (or so I thought) from the antenna connection on this non stock radio I got free. it is a very high end Clarion that cost like 800 back in the day about 10 years ago so a good unit. But after having to slap it a couple times today, it rebelled. I started to smeel something pungent and then saw smoke emulation out of the dash!

That is never a good thing and especially bad in heavy traffic that is moving at 30mph. I yanked it out quickly and yanked the power plug and it stopped being a fire hazard but it is now in the trash at the local Shell station!

The radio that is, my truck is fine.

And I JUST got the truck registered in my name YESTERDAY and there was a bad omen on my way to work, a first gen ram truck burned out on the side of the road! The FD had JUST put it out and I thought I am glad mine isn't on fire.......about thirty seconds later this happened....

 

That's never a good feeling. Did you damage the dash yanking it out?

 

Luckily no! I had never fully inserted the sleeve since I was thinking about being able to yank it out if I parked somewhere where I was scared it would get stollen. So the sleeve wasn't crimped in. It just slid out no problem....and I was glad I made THAT decision!

 

BTW the radio was hotter than hell. I had to let it hang there for a minute or two while it cooled down to fully unplug it. The first thing I did when I slid it out was yank the hot wire feed.

 

I had that happen on the 76 when i was futzing around with it one day. Wire shorted out.

 

None of my wiring shorted out, I was lucky it didn't but it was a component in the radio itself. I have another head unit for it I am going to install today. It's an old school Alpine probably 5 or 6 years old but has a great receiver and amp in it. Unfortunately it doesn't have a MP3 input but I never really listen to them in my truck anyway. Plus if I need to I can swap this one into my BMW and get the one out of my BMW that has a MP3 input and an SD card reader. I never listen to music in the bMW anyway since it is so friggin fun to drive.

 

radio's in general get hot. i know i have touched my share of hot stereo's. your lucky to have a 6 year old stereo kicking around. i when we replace the stereo in my dads ford we installed a stereo that was about 40 years old. that was all we had kicking around. it even had a eight track player but we have never tested it. we were even just talking about taking the front part of it apart to clean the ropes or whatever it uses to change stations.

 

Glad your truck didn't burn!

 

I don't know how I ended up with so many stereos. Part of it is my freinds give the old ones to me if I help or just install their new one they got outright. That is how I got the clarion that caught fire, it was given to me free when I swapped in the stock head unit back in in a Galandawagon. he had spent 800 on this head unit and then wanted it swapped out to the stock unit after a few years.

 

Its a little off topic, but fire related. I owned three Fords at the same time for a while, an 88 F350, a 90 F150 and a 67 Mustang. All in the SAME week, the 90 spit trans fluid up the dipstick tube, onto the exhaust and caught fire, the 88 had a wheel cylinder blow and catch my drum on fire, and the 67's headlight wiring caught fire. Pretty sure spontanious combustion was a factory option at the Ford house. Fortunatly, none of mine burnt to the ground... That void was filled by my 90 Isuzu Trooper. Burnt to a crisp IN THE FIRE DEPARTMENT PARKING LOT while they got thier gear on. When I was pulling into the parking lot, I probably could have dumped a soda on the fire to put it out, but didnt have anything handy. Total loss. Never did verify what started that, but I suspect it was related to the alarm system somebody had put on it.