Stock Ford Radio: Radio works, tape deck doesn't

[GhostSignal]

Hello all. I'm new here. I hope I'm posting in the right place...

I have a 2001 Explorer with a factory tape player in it. A few months ago, the tape player mysteriously stopped working. I can insert tapes and eject them just fine, but the radio acts as if no tape is inserted and therefore won't try playing it. It doesn't make noises or keep flipping. It simple won't recognize that a tape is inserted and won't go into tape mode because of it. The radio works absolutely fine though...

I've looked everywhere for answer, but this seems to be a unique problem, as every thread I've seen deals with tape decks that recognize a tape is inserted, but won't play it properly.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

[GhostSignal]

Also:

I used the tape deck primarily as a way to hook my mp3 player up. However, I've tried it with both the adapter and tapes and it won't recognize either.

I also do not, can not, and will not listen to the radio, so any ideas would be helpful, as I haven't had music in my vehicle for a while now.

I considered trying to bypass the tape deck altogether and just wire my mp3 player directly into the head unit, but without a way to make the stereo go into 'tape' mode, it wouldn't do much good...

 

[Crutchfield Vlad]

I'm not sure what's going on with the tape deck. Sound like it going bad and just defective. But for a good solution you could use this AUX/iPod interface. This would plug into the CD changer port on the back of the factory radio and allow you to control the iPod. I hope that helps.