The CD player in my Eagle Vision was slow to change tracks, didn’t seek to outer tracks, or handle my heavily scratched cd collection well… And, this finally led to some minor embarrassment – enough to drive me to fix it.

This CD player design was featured in basically all Chrysler vehicles through the 90’s (plus a earlier and later). The dash surround, at least in my Eagle, is attached with only speed clips – it pops right out when you gentley pry at the edges. Be careful detaching the wires since the harness doesn’t let you pull the deck out very far. This deck is grounded at one point only – through the strap bolted onto the back. Keep this in mind if you test with the cover off.

Now, if you’re smart, put a CD in, and seek to the last track before ejecting the CD and removing the deck – this will avoid most of the tedious manual seeking by finger tip. Remove the screws holding all the metal covers, including the heatsink side and ground bolt plate. Pull the top logic/RF board from the deck, exposing screws through the bottom board – remove these so that the bottom cover can be partially removed, giving access to the laser assembly. You will have to rotate the gear driving the slide the laser is mounted on in order to bring the laser close to the outside edge, exposing the gain potentiometer (see image below). Turn this pot clockwise to increase the laser gain – too much gain will burn out the laser, ruining your deck! You have been warned! I only had to turn the pot on mine a hair (about half a degree) to get the gain I needed – Unfortunately I couldn’t find solder points easily accessible with an ohm meter to measure the change the adjustment made.