Cassette player "clean" light?

[Summit03]

I own an 93' Accord LX.

So I bought an iPod and have been using it in the car through a cassette adapter in a stock head unit. It has been working fine for two months but a week ago the "clean" light next to the cassette player came on, and now when I listen to the iPod for more than like 20 minutes, the tape like stops, tries to start again, stops, tries to start again, and then ejects. Same thing happens when you put it back in.

I took some isopropyl alcohol to the contact point on the tape adapter and tried that, but it didn't fix the problem.

Is there a way to go in and physically clean the whole damn thing? I don't see how it could have gotten dirty in the first place, I essentially wired in the tape adapter so you can't take it out...

The radio and everything still works fine, it's just the tape player giving me fits. Any help would be very much appreciated.

[AccordCodger]

The "clean" light comes on automatically after a certain number of hours. (It isn't smart enough to know if the tape player really IS dirty). So I don't think your problem is related to the clean light.

To turn the light off, just push (the light) in with a ballpoint, and hold it for a few seconds.

What happens if you put a cassette in (instead of the adaptor)? If it ejects that, you most likely have a bad tape deck.