Car tape deck sounds awful... Guess what? BAD CAPS!

[eccerr0r]

Surprisingly there appears to be two problems with my car tape deck.

1. The belts are kind of tired, but it works fine when warmed up. Alas what do you expect when the tape deck is 22 years old.

2. BAD CAPACITORS! No switch mode PSU in the radio I don't think, but the caps went dry and no wonder why it sounded horrible.

Alas this was a stock deck, nothing to write home about, or nothing to write about in general. Swapped out 4 of the caps in it that had over 3 ohms ESR (47uF and larger), and at least the non-belt problems "sounded" like it went away.

The caps looked like they were 1970s caps. No clear date code on them and no idea why a 1990s car has 1970s caps. Probably Chrysler got a great deal on them, or perhaps I need to look for a better possible date code.

[bluto]

Re: Car tape deck sounds awful... Guess what? BAD CAPS!

Pictures? Model Number?

[ReeceyBurger123]

Re: Car tape deck sounds awful... Guess what? BAD CAPS!

pictures? Model number?

+1

[eccerr0r]

Re: Car tape deck sounds awful... Guess what? BAD CAPS!

It's a Chrysler stock radio, not sure who actually OEMed it but it does have custom parts in it (booo). The attached picture is the caps I pulled from it (well, not the radial cap, the axial ones are the ones I pulled.) Three of them are 47uF, and one is 100uF, all 10V. I didn't have any axial caps so I just plopped in some radial caps in their place.

[redwire]

Re: Car tape deck sounds awful... Guess what? BAD CAPS!

Philips electrolytic caps were horrible even back to the 1970's. Those are the blue axial ones in the pic. I change them on sight.

[dmill89]

Re: Car tape deck sounds awful... Guess what? BAD CAPS!

It's a Chrysler stock radio, not sure who actually OEMed it but it does have custom parts in it (booo).

Being a Chrysler OE unit it was most likely made by either Mitsubishi or Huntsville Electronics (Chrysler's captive electronics division until they sold it in pieces from 1996-1998). The Philips parts would make me lean toward Huntsville, I doubt Mitsubishi would be using Philips components.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Car tape deck sounds awful... Guess what? BAD CAPS!

After listening it for a bit, though it's significantly better than before, looks like I missed a cap or two. Before it sounded really screwey, now it's just bass that seems a bit weak and treble a bit too strong. I should have replaced the 1uF caps that were DC blocking caps on the audio signal that I thought were OK...they were also those Philips electrolytics. Oh well, I'll get to them someday.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Car tape deck sounds awful... Guess what? BAD CAPS!

Actually... listening it to it again, it sounds fine when playing a regular tape. However when using a line-in to tape adapter, sometimes it sounds very tinny. Ugh. Hate proprietary car radios, hard to debug in circuit. Need to get a bunch of wiring harness so I can test on bench instead of in situ.