Fixing A Jammed Ba Falcon 6 Stacker + Icc Fascia Paint

[Xyra]

Hi all,

Last week I discovered my BA falcon ICC decided to eat my daughter's "In the Night Garden" CD (this stupid little blue man that haunts many toddler's parents these days). This equates to the world ending in the eyes of a 3 year old, so I thought I’d share how I fixed this issue.

When I pressed the CD button, the ICC would try to play the CD but you'd hear a bit of a clunk sound and it would promptly return back to playing the radio.

I tried everything I could think of to get that blessed CD to play over a few days but it did the same thing every time. Everything was looking like I would have to send the thing to Ford or ASL Media. Argh!

However, big kudos to all you guys who have posted awesome guides on how to pull these things apart - thought I'd give it a shot. I had a bit of trouble pulling off the panel around the gear shift, and unclipping the panel up he top of the ICC but my fiancé helped me get a bit of force behind it.

I figured that ominous sticker of keeping the ICC upright wouldn't count if you had the ICC in 20+ pieces.. which way is up then? The stacker would be the only thing I could think of that could be sensitive, but it was broken anyway.

I won't go over the ICC dismantling steps because they are clearly explained elsewhere. However, once I got to the CD stacker things got a bit interesting. At first I was a bit cautious with it - there are springs everywhere and it looks kind of delicate.

The CD was stuck in the top slot but the stacker seemed to have this big gap where it looked like it was trying to read the second slot. All the plastic twirls around the stacker were aligned with the second slot that had no CD in it. All of the CD slot inserts were also slanted making it look like something wasn't quite right.

I tried to turn the plastic twirls and stretch the springs but nothing was working. Being gentle wasn’t working, so I shook the thing to see if the kids had jammed any 50 cent pieces down there (none) and prised open the CD slot. There wasn’t much resistance but the stacker was stuck trying to read a phantom CD. The only thing I could really do next was try and pull the CD out.

Success! Quite easy - I just had to maneouvre the stack of CD inserts up a bit at the back to align it with the CD entrance point at the front. The CD was firm, but it slid out quite easily once you got it moving.

Once the CD was out, the stacker was still poised in the open position around that phantom CD in slot 2. Weird. Anyways I thought it might be best to put the CD back in there but in slot 2 to see if that clicked any springs/knobs into place. I don't think it actually did anything but the CD slid straight into that slot with a defined clunk. The centre spool was aligned too so it looked like it was in the right place.

Rather than risk putting it all back together only to have it hate that CD again, I decided to pull it out. Taking it out of the 2nd slot wasn't as easy as the top one. Although once I got the CD at the right position to be able to slide it in the right direction it went willingly.

Was nothing else to do but put the thing back together. There's a nice guide on how to put pre-outs on the audio PCB but I decided I'd tampered with enough for one day. Doubt I'd ever get around to doing anything with the pre-outs anyway

The ICC was virtually sitting in pieces everywhere so I figured that I may as well paint the fascia (and a few other bits) gloss black because I've been talking about it for years. I quite like the silver "spears" (or whatever they are called) under the glove box/around the steering wheel, so I decided instead to paint around the vents near the two doors black to offset the soon-to-be black ICC. The biggest trick here was in pulling the vent bits off. You have to take the outer caps of the dash off first. Just pull up the inner door seal and they clip out.

The other thing of note was those fan level and heat level circle inserts in the ICC itself. They look pretty flimsy but they do come off if you push them gently from the back with a blunt instrument. So glad I didn't have to repaint those on.

As for the actual painting, my fiance took a trip to supercheap and picked up some fine sand paper, cleaner, gloss black paint and then clear coat. The bloke at supercheap reckoned you didn't need primer with this paint. One useful discovery - I didn't know the cup holder has an insert for easy cleaning (and consequently easy frame painting). Cleaning of this in the future will be easier!

Everything was sanded with wet sandpaper and cleaned. Then it was sprayed evenly with multiple coats of black leaving it 5-10 minutes between the initial coats. After four coats were put on, it was left to stand overnight (mainly because the sun went down and the frost came out).

The next day was sunny and dry - perfect to add another coat of black, lightly sand to remove dust/bugs and then add a few coats of clear (ty scott for helping). The clear was left to set for another day and then all the pieces were polished. I read somewhere that polish makes it easier to keep the dust off - seems to be working ok.

Then it was just a matter of plugging all the bits back together. Must have went ok because no screws were left over (always good). Here's what it looked like:

I'm stoked with the result. The car started first go and the CD player is now unjammed, wanting to load CDs. Just thought I'd post this to give those DIY guys/girls some confidence that it is possible and the ICC isn't all that scary a project.

Cheers,

Mel

[XF Falcon]

came out pretty good mate, good on you for giving it a go yourself!

[JETURBO]

top write up bud

[Buf-Phoon]

Top quality second post mate , well done

Looks the goods as well

[Xyra]

Thanks guys! Will endeavour to write up future projects too