Thread: How to repair your Alpine CD Multiplayer in a Range Rover P38

Hi,

I haven't seen details of how to repair the Alpine 6 CD Stacker in a P38 1999 Range Rover, and I've had a PM asking me for details, so I thought I'd post it. Sure I could have replaced the head unit, but I prefer my motors original!

Hope this helps someone.

This cures 5 faults I had.

1. Intermittent audio in one channel
2. The CD player skips wildly.
3. The tray of 6 CDs often sticks.
4. It looses track of the CD, and says there is no CD inserted, when there is.
5. The CD player will only play the first 20 or 30 seconds of a track, then goes silent.

Remove the panel in the boot on the left, by turning the four plastic studs by 90 degrees using a 10 pence piece, and then pull away the panel.


Unplug the multiplug on the left of the CD player.
This is where I found the first fault: the cable comes loose in the plug after a decade or so. It is a simple matter to re-solder it, which means that both left and right channels are no longer intermittent.


Remove the CD from it’s mounting, by loosening the four bolts, then lift up and out the CD player.


Unscrew the four screws on the top of the CD player.


Then prise off the top of the lid, by inserting a screwdriver up it’s backside, and loosening the crack in the back, then levering off the top. There is a small lug in the front top, which needs to clip out.


Here I found the second fault.

The anti-shock system for the Alpine CD multiplayer consists of 2 springs and 4 rubber dampers. All 4 of these had fallen off mine, and it was hanging by one spring, meaning that all the vibration of the vehicle was going through to the CD player.


Right, now you can look at the guts of the player, by putting it up on it’s side.
To free the sticky draw problem, there is a small metal lug that had bent up and was holding the drawer in place: it’s a simple matter to bend it straight again.
On the left of its bottom, is the CD reading part. The bit you are really interested in is the worm drive that moves the head under the CD.


Slowly rotate your worm until your head pokes through, by moving all the way to the left hand side. Through the top you can then see the head of the laser. It's the convex bit of perspex in the picture above, behind the bendy steel strip. DO NOT DO THIS WITH THE CD PLAYER PLUGGED IN. You can use a CD lens cleaner to clean the lens, but I’ve found these less than effective with the old Alpine units, so using a small cotton wool bud and an alcohol mix, gently clean the laser lens. This stops the CD player skipping.


The worm drive should also move very freely: spin it and see if the head moves up and down easily, and has some inertia after you finish spinning it. Mine was quite sticky, with a thin coating of red dust. This stops the head moving easily, and the jerks meant the head couldn’t continually read the CD, causing another fault. Clean it, and then apply a very thin layer of audio grease over the brass screw, and then move the head up and down by hand a few times to free it up. If you don’t have any to hand, there should be a some white grease at either ends of the screw, or on the moving tray platter you can use.

Reassembly is a reversal of removal. Pop on the two springs (which is quite tricky, as the unit must balance on the springs). Then put on the rubber shocks, pressing them firmly onto the brass spigots, so they can’t come out. The unit should slightly bounce as you shake it, but not touch the sides. Pop the top on, plug it in, and bolt it back into the boot. Robert will then be your mother's brother, music wise.

Finally, you may want to set up your radio, by entering the setup menu, as listed a few posts back here on the forum. Press and hold the "i" button with the unit turned on, then press the CD button, and Set-up appears on the screen.

The number buttons allow you to change the parameters of the unit: the most useful is button 6 which changes the market area, and the RDS parameters: USA has 10kHz tuning, Oz has 9kHz tuning, etc…

All pretty basic stuff, but I hope it helps.

Nice work Lorkers. I love pictorial write-ups like this... makes it easy to follow for simple folk like me

Shame I don't have a CD stacker to test it out on any more.

Cheers, Paul.