My wife has a 2001 S40. She got into a very minor fender-bender, and now the heater and the radio intermittently turn on and off. The radio is the HU-615, and it works when you turn the car on, but as soon as you start moving, the sound shuts off, and the display flashes quickly, back and forth between "TELEPHONE" and FM (or wherever the radio was set when it was working). When I stop again (with the car still running), the radio does not resume working.

In addition, the heater stops working, and the orange and green (LED?) lights signaling whether the AC and seat-heaters are on no longer turn on. The dash/instrument panel lights for the heater and radio still work.

Any clue? I tried checking if the fuse had a loose connection, and it looked fine. The radio fuse is also separate from the heater fuse, and if the radio was losing power, it would make me enter the code each time it powered up, but that is not the case (although I did have to do it once).

I tried looking for a manual of the radio to look for the "TELEPHONE" setting, but I could not find the manual, or any info in the owners manual about the TELEPHONE setting. We do not have a cell phone hands-free set hooked up to the radio.

Anybody had this happen to them? It sure seems like a strange problem, and I know it wouldn't be cheap to take to the dealer.

Thanks,

Matt

 

What kind of damage was done from the fender bender?

 

There was literally no damage at all. She accidentally took her foot off the brake at a stoplight and her car inched forward (automatic transmission) into the car in front of her. No dents, just a tiny bit of the other car's paint on her license plate frame. There was probably a sudden stop, which is the only thing that I think could have caused it. The radio worked right before she hit the other car, and did not work right after she hit the car.

Thanks,

Matt

 

I would check all the connections at the battery,alt., and starter.Does anything else go out when it happens?

 

Thanks. I will check the connections to the battery. I peaked under the hood yesterday and couldn't find anything abnormal. It doesn't appear that anything else goes out when the radio does.

One other detail - the frequency with which the radio display toggles between TELEPHONE and FM seems proportional to the speed. If you are not moving, it does seem to work (provided it stopped on "FM"), but as you move faster, it toggles back and forth faster. It is as if some signal from the speedometer is interfering and causing the telephone wire to trip. I don't believe it is proportional to engine speed, just tire speed.

Apparently the heater was working today, so I'm not sure how much of a piece of the puzzle that is.

Does anybody have a wiring diagram for the radio? I am an electrical engineer and I feel I could at least take the radio out and look at the wiring to see if the telephone wire is exposed or something, but I would need to know which wire the telephone wire is.

Thanks a lot for your help.