rain and the radio
 

Stopped at a local eatery yesterday evening for a quick bite. While inside, a fast and hard rain shower occurred w/ the top down. We didn't see it coming or it raining as the sun was still shining... Anyway, the owner of the restaruant (friend of mine) noticed the top down and alerted us. I ran out and put the top up, but the inside was soaked as you can imagine. After drying everything as much as possible, two problems developed w/ the radio/CD player:

1. On the drive home, the volume wouldn't work (acted like it was muted but it wasn't).
2. When I got it home, I pulled the radio faceplate and used air to blow everything out. When I put it back together, the "mute" continued and the radio finally quit altogether (no power it seemed). Quick fuse check proved all OK.

I left her in the garage w/ the faceplate opened all night to further dry. This morning, everthing was/is fine. Has anyone else seen this? Is there a delay or moisture sensor built in to protect the radio? I can't find anything that addresses this in the owner's manual. Thanks.

It doesn't take much moisture to make most electronic circuitry get flakey. Even after blowing it out with air there would still be enough in there to give you a problem. About the only way to fix it quicker would be to bake it in an oven, which isn't practical with all the plastic in the faceplate. It appears that after drying overnight it's working, so you're probably OK.

You're lucky... the radio on my boat got wet in a storm, and it took three days before it dried out enough to work properly again.

In case this happens again there is also a fuse at the back of the radio- at least on my '99. That fuse blew on me a while back but the radio fuse at the fuse box was ok. Swapped it out and the radio worked again- except for the fact that I had the wrong radio code and had to go the dealer (no charge to retreive the code).
Regards,

derb

Electronics can be pretty resiliant if you just let them dry before attempting to operate. Unfortunately, it takes longer to dry out than it does to get wet. Running the electronics while wet will simply increase your likelihood of a short.

I had a friend who ran his cell phone through the wash. The display wouldn't work - but otherwise it seemed fine. About 2 weeks later - everything started working again.

Glad this worked out for you.