Audio IN Jack inside front console broken

[pjw73nh]

So the audio "in" jack in the console of my 08 LTD has gone bad. It broke the tip off a cable I was using and the tip lodged in the jack. I was able to remove it, but because it was in there for so long, it stretched out the conductors. The conductors are very hard to get at. I tried to "re-form" the conductors, to no avail.

The jack has a 4-wire connector on the back of it, but the jack itself only has 3 conductors inside that contact the cable plug. The replacement jack is anywhere from $67 to $100 from Ford. Radio shack has a "replacement" jack @ 2 for $3.29.

Past experience with audio systems would have me tie the two (-)s together to the common on the replacement jack. I am concerned that there is a discrete negative coming from the audio processor in the schematic for each channel. They MUST be there for a reason.

See schematics here: https://picasaweb.google.com/pjw73n...authkey=Gv1sRgCJ66i9TXzcbL_gE&feat=directlink

Any suggestions?

Tnx

 

[pjw73nh]

UPDATE: I broke the bad jack open and ohmed it out. Of the four inline pins on the back, the middle two pins (2 and 3) are tied together. Those pins (2&3) (middle two pins) are labeled as the (-) pins.. But further examination reveals that the schematics conflict with each other. Look at photo 1 in the diagrams. It shows pin 2 as a (-) and pin 3 as a (+). Yet photo 2 shows pins 2 & 3 as both (-)....

https://picasaweb.google.com/pjw73n...authkey=Gv1sRgCJ66i9TXzcbL_gE&feat=directlink

 

[DavidEBSmith]

Well. pretty much everybody who plugs an iPod into this is connecting the - pins together by plugging in a standard 3 conductor stereo plug, L+, R+, common -, with no apparent ill effects. So you have one schematic that matches the jack in real life, and one that doesn't. You'd have to guess that the former is correct and the latter is wrong.

Now that you have the jack out, I guess you could ohm it out further by plugging a plug into it and seeing which connectors on the plug match up to which pins on the jack.