I drove over to a buddy's house last night and when I went to leave I noticed that the little strip of a display was going nuts. It's like it tries to display every possible thing about 4 times a second. It actually looks pretty cool except for that I sort of like the function it typically provides (clock mostly). And everything still works normally, it's just the display.

The only out of the ordinary thing that happened prior was that I fixed a loose speaker connection to my sub, and it made a small spark at the speaker terminals while we were moving cables around. Also two times this last week I was driving along and my car seems to go into stupid-mode where it has much less power, idles like crap or not at all, but is magically ok after being fully turned off and restarted.. Why yes it is on 04...

Any ideas??

 

Replace the fuses?

 

I had this happen to me as well (while blowing hot air out when I had the AC on too). It turns out the control unit and my stock stereo headunit was having issues. I had the entire system replaced under warranty and it has never given me issues again.

 

Damn, I have the same problem -- erratic display + A/C blowing boiling hot air

For anyone with knowledge on this: would installing the Metra kit resolve this or is the control unit separate from this?

 

Yea I'll probably check for a blown fuse, might disconnect the battery too. I sure hope it's one of those goofy temporary things, but it was still like that this morning when I drove to the park-n-ride. At least I've got ice cold air though..

 

I have that happen about once a week when it starts getting hot outside. I'm getting ready to install a CarPC so I'll update this thread if I figure anything out when I'm back there.

 

I suppose this is for those respected gentlemen who are using the search button. I started my 8 this morning and the display was back to normal. So I suppose if yours is doing this and you're out of warranty then perhaps there is still hope..

And maybe it has something to do with the heat. Here in Houston it's only recently been getting furiously hot.

 

it's the heat i think. mine does it, too. it'd be fine after awhile. i have to always remember to put the windshield shade.

 

check all the connections on the back to make sure everything is ok.....sounds like something is loose back there

 

I had this happen a year ago or so. It was heat related. Very hot out, cycling garbage on the display. However, after a while it just became permanent.

I took it to the dealer who diagnosed corroded sottering in the CD player as the cause and gave me a rebuilt CD player at a prorated cost. I think that the whole thing put me back about $120, CD player labor and all. My car is an '04 and had about 70K miles on it when all went bad. The new CD player did fix it completely. My car was out of warranty at the time of the repair.

I am not convinced that it is always the CD player that might cause this. If the AC is blowing warm, I would wonder if that is a symptom that might point to the HVAC control unit as the cause. My AC worked fine at the time, but then so did my CD player and that was the cause of the display unit's problems.

I wrote up my experience in the tech section when it happened.

 

I had/have the same problem whenever it gets hot outside. Push on the radio unit either in the middle or in the corners until the display goes back to normal. It should work fine after that. Try it, it works every time.

 

This happened to me a few years ago. It's heat related and it took my dealership two visits before they got it fixed. Basically when you pull out the radio and start taking it apart, there is one circuit they showed me that was acting up.. they replaced it and I never had a problem since. Maybe I can find out the part number... but I dont have the service papers :/