Radio De-coding

[D87 SMW]

Today I went to the scrapyard and found the item I've been looking for since I bought the Special! A Philips R570 from a H reg Montego!
Thanks to RDGelders' knowledge on removing the said item I bought it along with a MKI centre console, drivers door bin, MKI steering wheel, MKI speaker grille (dashboard) and the Austin and Maestro badges for the tailgate - all for £8 !!! :) :) :cool: :) :laugh:
Anyway, how do you go about decoding the radio for use in my Maestro?

P.S: I do not have the code.

[E_T_V]

Plug it in first it might not need decoding, as I think you could enable/disable it as you see fit. Perhaps I'm thinking of another model though.

[D87 SMW]

Should I plug it in and see what happens?

[Austin-Rover]

best to check first - go and wire it up and see if it asks you for the code.

[H48HPE]

you can turn the codes off so its worth a try. when you put it in make sure that its arial is in too because on some units this needs to be pluged in before itll even come on, easy to forget if your just trying to see if it will work with no code.

plenty of places do decoding scrapyards sometimes do it but youll find someone in yellow pages. id recon it would cost 10 to 15 quid.

have a good look on the case to see if a previous owner has wrote it on somewhere, ive seen that done lots. another tip when buying from scrapyards is to get the owner manual if its still in the car cos people write the code in there (they usually turn up in gloveboxes)

get more of these units for spares when u see them, tape decks can be a pain.

andy.

[D87 SMW]

Cheers Andy!
I had a look on the case and I have found a 4 number code!
Just off now to install it - back with the result later.

Steve.

[H48HPE]

a number on one of mine had something like two 6s a 0 and an8 in it, you cold read it either way up:laugh:

good luck, it might just be a good un.

andy

[D87 SMW]

The four number code I found on the casing worked! I have yet to check the cassette player, but all seems ok. :) :cool: :cool:

[D87 SMW]

Radio part of it works fine. Display is ok, there is one bar on the second figure missing, but it's ok.
When playing a tape however, there is a fairly loud clicking (almost slipping) sound. Can anyone tell me what's up with it?

Steve.

[Austin-Rover]

Perhaps you should try playing a tape head cleaner in it and see if that helps.

[D87 SMW]

Oh yeah I think I might have one of those somewhere!

[H48HPE]

cleaning the heads wont stop the clicking sound, this is a mechanical fault in the mechanism, id put up with it or if you like taking stuff apart open it up and see if you can see the problem. you will need a torx screw driver (cant remember the size)

the screens do that missing segment thing all the time, if you press the plastic around the screen you might find it comes back on, dont press the actual screen though.

you see what i mean about getting spare units now, if you collect enough you will get enough parts to make a really good one. the R630 has auto reverse on it which is good.

i notice the philips radio with RDS on it was an optional extra for my car so im looking for one of them now.

andy

[D87 SMW]

I presume you mean Philips R670 that has the Autoreverse. The R681 I believe has the Dolby surround sound.
I don't fancy taking the radio apart, might as well just leave it as the car won't be in everday use. I'm glad I've got something before the M Car Rally - I was going to take one of those bulky partable units that run on 8 D batteries!

[H48HPE]

yer sorry, R670.

You could get any of that range of philips stereo when they were new as an optional extra.

andy

[D87 SMW]

Dad had an R570 in his LX before it was wrote off. Good to have the same radio again.
Ah, I haven't connected the rear speaker up yet, does it really matter which clip goes where?

[Austin-Rover]

one clip is slightly different to the other so it will only fit one way - a simple job to connect them up...

[D87 SMW]

Ah, I'll have a bash at that later.

[D87 SMW]

Rear speakers are now working. One's a bit crackly when volume is turned up - but like I'd be doing that much. ;) ;) ;)
Now - the tape player. I bought a head cleaning tape - that made no difference. It didn't even come out dirty! Anyway - it's still making that wierd slipping/clicking noise when playing...
Does it need taking apart, because I don't have the tool to do it!

[H48HPE]

having taken a few of these apart id recomend you get one as a spare to try first but open it up anyway and have a look, its fairly easy to see what hapens

as far as the tool goes, do what i did and go to a tool shop and get them to sort you out with the correct fitting torx screwdriver (take the unit with you), that would be better than one of the socket set type torx drivers because you'll not get it into tight gaps.

take it apart and try and see if you can take the tape deck out, if you get stuck post on this thread and i should or someone else im sure will help u out. i think youll figure it out though.

andy

[H48HPE]

probably best thing would be to take it apart in the car then you can play it with the cover off and look for what is making the noise whilst its running. the top cover just levers off anyway. its the plastic front and the tapedeck itself thats secured by torx screws.

id take the cover off the top and have a look, its really easy.

andy

[D87 SMW]

Thanks a lot for that Andy - I'll have to try it sometime when I'm not fixing up A615 NFV for next Mondays Rally!