[Fatdave]

my coupe had the r3 dash in it and had it out several times. takes no more than 1 min to remove. i start with the 4 screws then make sure both front seats are slid back as far as they can go. where the centre meets the hand brake section, put your fingers either side and pull it out towards the seats about 1cm and then pull up.
next you will feel a little tension half way up and at the top. move your hands up and give it a gentle tug. it will come away enough to get your hands behind to start unpluging switches.
easy. you may need to slide the stereo forward a little but once the dash is out you can get to the cage so dont need the special tools.

[mach1rob]

^^^WHS^^^

Start at the bottom, work forwards and up, pull harder as it's only the 4 screws that hold it in, the radio should come out with it, but you may have to manouever it around a bit to clear the handbrake and/or armrest (if fitted) It may also help to unscrew the gearknob, on the latter ones the gater is clipped to the knob.

[Deev]

Okay so I've managed to extract the central dash, but I'm no nearer to working out what's wrong. The two connectors I indentified don't appear to plug into anything (I'm not sure they ever did) and there are two further grey connectors that don't appear to connect to anything either (they're taped to the loom with black sparky tape... evidently these cars had a fair few options!!).

So back to square one. Anyone have a copy of a wiring diagram I could take a look at? I was hoping it wouldn't come to this :(

[RGNEAVE]

Hi

The 2nd connector looks like the steering wheel controls for the radio do you have the orig unit installed i have an r770 and it fits in the back

the 1st looks like the cd changer controls but not sure ?

I do have wireing diagrams that i can email if you like but there not at my house and are in storage im emailing them to somone else this weekend anyway

I purchased the 1989 - 1995 Haney manual for my cabby and also the later bubble shaped manual as this covered my dash and wireing

Dont worry about the two gray ones as i have a few around my cabby that dont do anything

[Deev]

Right... I've done a little more digging and it looks like, yes, the thin one is the steering wheel control connector (I'd completely forgotten about it after fitting the aftermarket head unit). I've also acquired a copy of RAVE (don't ask) and that tells me that the larger connector is in fact a diagnostic port, so once again not relevant. So it's looking more and more likely that I haven't actually dislodged something and that I've somehow blown something - possibly shorted something out. Of course, I thought that was what the fuses were for, but I guess a quick spike might have made its way to a component without blowing the fuse (all of the fuses that I have checked for all of the failed components are fine!)

So my current area of suspicion is the Multi Function Unit, which does appear to control in some way everything that has gone wrong. All of the connections seem fine, and I've extracted the unit and broken it open and there's nothing obviously wrong with it, although obviously it's entirely possible that the IC in the middle has fried. So I guess I need to try to find myself another one of those. At least they're not massively expensive on eBay if it proves to be a red herring.

This is becoming much more of a nightmare job than I was hoping...

[Deev]

Stand down red alert. I am an idiot. Whilst refitting the MFU I took another scan through the fusebox and lo and behold found a 10A fuse labelled "Radio MFU" which had blown. Replaced it and everything immediately sprang back into life.

Why on earth something labelled "Radio MFU" would affect things like the electric windows and the rear wiper etc, I have no idea, and indeed how I managed to miss it during my original sweep of the fusebox.... but, well, put it down as a learning experience.

At least I know how to dismantle and reassemble a large percentage of my dashboard now :P



Cheers for your help guys

[Fatdave]

hate it when that happens to me just cos i wasnt looking hard enough

[wilcox.ian]

I spent £20 for the garage to tell me the problem was a 30p fuse!

[S495KBL]

Down the left side behind the center console is a loom which has quite a bit of feed off wires etc. I have known them to rub through on the center metal cage and cause all sorts of havack.