Strange car radio symptoms

I've got a 2003 Camry SE, with the stock Radio/CD player, 6 speakers.
A couple weeks ago we had some unusually warm weather for January (I'm
in the chicago area.) For a couple days it got up as high as 50
degrees, and very humid. At that time, my radio appeared to go south.
The sound was full of static and distortion.

Adjusting the balance setting, I discovered that the left channel was
the problem. While the right channel was perfectly fine, the left
channel would either cut out completely, or be so full of static and
distortion that it was unusable. This was when the radio was playing;
AM or FM. When I switched to the CD player, BOTH left and right
channels worked fine.

This tells me that it wasn't the speakers, or the wiring, but that it
was the Radio/CD player unit that was defective. Somehow the left
channel - of the radio portion of the unit only - was defective.

When the weather returned to the typical cold, dry January weather,
the problem disappeared. BOTH left and right channels worked fine, for
both the radio and the CD player.

It was too much of a coincidence that the problem corresponded exactly
with the weather. So I'm left with no other conclusion that the root
cause of this problem was the unusually warm, humid weather in
January. Has anyone ever known of this happening? Any insight you can
provide would be appreciated.

Thanks.

"HL0105" <tron9901.DeleteThis@msn.com> wrote in message
news:b934b285-8f5a-4372-8dba-fda8c8ce02d0@s13g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
> I've got a 2003 Camry SE, with the stock Radio/CD player, 6 speakers.
> A couple weeks ago we had some unusually warm weather for January (I'm
> in the chicago area.) For a couple days it got up as high as 50
> degrees, and very humid. At that time, my radio appeared to go south.
> The sound was full of static and distortion.
>
> Adjusting the balance setting, I discovered that the left channel was
> the problem. While the right channel was perfectly fine, the left
> channel would either cut out completely, or be so full of static and
> distortion that it was unusable. This was when the radio was playing;
> AM or FM. When I switched to the CD player, BOTH left and right
> channels worked fine.
>
> This tells me that it wasn't the speakers, or the wiring, but that it
> was the Radio/CD player unit that was defective. Somehow the left
> channel - of the radio portion of the unit only - was defective.
>
> When the weather returned to the typical cold, dry January weather,
> the problem disappeared. BOTH left and right channels worked fine, for
> both the radio and the CD player.
>
> It was too much of a coincidence that the problem corresponded exactly
> with the weather. So I'm left with no other conclusion that the root
> cause of this problem was the unusually warm, humid weather in
> January. Has anyone ever known of this happening? Any insight you can
> provide would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks.


Circuit boards can flex with temperature changes, and if there's a tiny
crack, the flexing will cause part of a circuit to open and close. This is
why technicians will sometimes use a heat gun to force this to happen during
the diagnostic process.

There could also be a dozen other reasons for the problem. Don't take it to
the dealer, though. They'll just send the unit to an independent repair
place and probably charge you double what the shop charges them, plus labor
to take out and reinstall the unit. Check your yellow pages for places that
fix these things, and remove the unit yourself if you can.