1987 760turbo - remove a cassette?

hi -

i have the original equipment TC-61xx AM-FM cassette player with
the little equalizer just below it.

cassette portion hasn't worked well for years so i stopped using
it. didn't prevent a girl friend from trying it on her own though.

now i have a cassette stuck in the machine and i can't listen to
the radio and it's driving me crazy!

how do i get it out?

obviously the eject button doesn't do the trick. i can tell you
the ff and rw work, but it doesn't work in play mode. i've tried
to lower the tape chassis, but i can't seem to get it over the reel
hubs.

she told me the tape doesn't have to be saved, is ripping it into
pieces my only option?

please help with any suggestions that will allow me to hear my
radio again. many thanks.

 

Been there with a number of cassette units. Occasionally they will succeed
in spitting the tape out after a few weeks, but the defect is almost always
a stretched drive belt in the player and there is no assurance it will ever
develop enough grip to eject your tape. Once the unit is out of the car and
the covers are off it isn't hard to figure out which way to turn things with
your fingers to get the tape to eject. I usually plug it back in if I can
and watch the spinning wheels, then see which one(s) aren't moving with the
belt or which belt isn't moving when the motor spins. Be aware the basic
problem is usually that the tape isn't going all the way down - once the
tape is pulled all the way down it will probably play and eject okay.

You will also see that the tape won't even come out in pieces.

Mike

 

WHen I bought my '93 the same thing-mradio was OK, but tape was not
functional. I took the radio out and took it apart. Mine was modular,
so I bought a spare on eBay and used the tape seciton to get it
working. The problem with mine was that the owner had small
children... I found coins all over the car (including in the tape
drive). I had to vacuum out all the cereal from everywhere (including
in the spare tire well).

Remove the radio and open the case. Nothing to lose- it already
doesn't work and probably would cost more to fix than to replace from
a breaker anyway.

As it turned out, mine got stuck in a half-load position and the
loading motor was fried...


__ __
Randy & \ \/ /alerie's
\__/olvo
'93 960 Estate

 

Replace the radio with an aftermarket CD player, if you can find one that's
not too gaudy. Those OEM units weren't very good to begin with, I was
shocked at how much better the radio performance was on the new one I
installed in my car, though it plays MP3s so I almost never use the radio.

 

thanks a million to both of you!

once i removed the faceplate it was pretty easy to get the cassette
out. didn't do the whole deal with the cover 'cause i really don't
care to pursue repairing the cassette player.

see below if you can follow with help re: replacement

curious about two points.

1. i was always told it was the volvo speakers that weren't good. is
it the radio, the speakers, or both that were subpar as stock units?

2. i have two fairly nice auto radio combos sitting around my house.
is there some sort of radio flaceplate frame i can buy so that i can
install one of these where the original volvo unit was? (i'd keep the
original if i ever decide to sell the car...)

thanks again

 

The weakest link is the low end amplifiers Volvo used. Upgrading the
amp is the single biggest improvement you can do to your system. Of
course, if you change out the head unit, your new one will most likely
have an amp built in, so you get both benefits. You should still be
able to get the frame so you can neatly install standard DIN sized
radios into the current radio location. Since you have a radio, buy a
faceplate adapter and a wiring adapter, then see if you need to change
your speakers.

--
Mike F.
Thornhill (near Toronto), Ont.

Replace tt with t (twice!) and remove parentheses to email me directly.
(But I check the newsgroup more often than this email address.)

 

Don't bother to change the radio. It and the speakers are made by Alpine and
are capable of very good sound quality. If you have the full six (or 8)
speaker set-up which has an amplifier as well the reproduction is of
excellent quality. I am sure that you can find a cassette unit from a
scrapyard that will work.

All the best, Peter.

 

The speakers are nothing spectacular, but they're not difficult or expensive
to replace if you want better.

You can buy mounting and wiring kits to adapt a standard DIN sized unit with
no modifications to the car.

 

Most of these had 2 or 4 speaker setups with a crappy underpowered amp and
it's getting near 20 years old. I know when I replaced mine the speakers
were tattered at the surrounds and sounded fuzzy, the tape player belt was
slipping, the radio got lousy reception and of course no CD player. $250
later I have a nice CD/MP3 player and nice new speakers that sound far
better than the original and have far more features.

Of course these last couple years it's hard to find anything that's not
outrageously gaudy looking.