Radio dead since battery reconnection

[Menophanes]

Last July I wrote about the curious behaviour of my RD2 Clarion radio, which had no working on/off switch and which occasionally refused to stop playing when the ignition was switched off. Lately it has gone to the opposite extreme. I had to take the battery out for charging after the auxiliary belt came off, and although most things resumed normal working after I reconnected it (no problems with engine, lights, windows or error messages), the radio was completely dead afterwards. As a temporary measure I have fitted an old, cheap, uncoded Goodman set which I have been shunting from one car to another for the past eight years or so, and this works, but in a rather odd way; it is completely independent of the ignition and it loses its memory every time I switch it off, so that I have to re-tune it manually at the beginning of every journey. It looks, therefore, as if the initial fault - that of running when the ignition was off - has now become permanent. But how could this possibly happen? and why should the original unit have gone into so complete a trance?

There are of course far worse things that could happen. Nonetheless, I should like to reinstate the original set if possible; not only is it better-looking, but its reception was much better.

Oliver Mundy.

[steve_earwig]

So it's gone from hard to turn off to hard (impossible) to turn on. I don't know if RD2s have a fuse in the back of them. Someone had sprayed the dash of my D9 with that back to black shite some of which had gone into the controls of its RD3, making it hard to turn off and on and I'm wondering if it's worth spraying some switch cleaner in yours.

Btw the problem on your replacement is due to two of the wires being swapped (I'll bet you guessed that tho)

[8Jb9]

Might be unrelated, but my radio wouldn't turn on either after a battery change, not until I configured the clock on the multifunction display. No issues before changing the battery, and no issues after configuring the clock.

[Menophanes]

Thank you both for your suggestions. I had re-set the date and time on the multi-function display.

In fact, however, there is no mystery - and no hope. On removing the head unit I found that the green circuit-board behind the front panel was cracked across one corner, with the result that at least six of the tracks running from the on/off switch were broken. Why must they make these things from such brittle materials?

Clearly I shall have to put up with losing Radio 3 every time I go down a hill.

Oliver Mundy.

[Welly]

On a separate note; you say your Aux Belt 'came off' ? you were very lucky it didn't get tangled up around the bottom pulley and shred the cambelt (it does happen).