Craig W460 repair help

[Col Bennett]

The head may be bad or out of alignment. Also, if you have very old tapes or they were stored where they got hot it can affect them badly. IMHO not worth wasting time over. Time to move into the 21st century.

Thanks David. I'm all about originality so keen to get the cassette player fully functional again. Believe it or not, I still have new cassettes to play.

Thanks Colin. As for the gain, maybe inspect the capacitors (the little can like things) on the board(s). They should have a flat bottom. If they are rounded they are blown. I've heard that they make the built-in amp inoperable.

Other than that, it may need to be sent to one of the people that repairs them on here, e.g. Elvis or Dave Graham (if he still has a guy that does it), among others.

Thanks Dana. Yeah, I'll take a look. I'm thinking it might be a job for Elvis or Dave Graham's guy. Keen to get it fixed as everything else on the unit works great.

[David T]

If originality is important to you then go for it. Also consider there are shops that can gut the unit and fill it with 21st century technology and still maintain the outward appearance of the 20th century. In many ways we all use the latest technology to repair, maintain, and upgrade many of the systems of the car. Consider everyone using Bitmaster's upgrades for example.As long as you can undo changes I say go for it. The only place originality is important is in a Concours. I favor reliability and safety over originality.

[dmcnc]

I had this same issue (huge volume drop when playing cassette and sound similar to large hall - definitely not stereo quality).
The culprit ended up being the VERY small gauge wiring (5 wires) connecting the cassette head to the first board on the preamp stage. It seems that vibration from driving and cassette ejecting stress the wire ends until they break leaving you with an incomplete reading of your cassette. I was able to cut and solder them back in place, but I did purchase a slightly larger gauge set for replacement if these break in the future. Results - full, stereo sound coming out of the head as it should! I'm very impressed with Type IV cassettes on the Craig.
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Replaced my belt today thanks to the really helpful tips and photos in this thread.

Had a huge clean-up job as my original belt turned to an insanely sticky black goo on touch and had coated every spindle in the deck. It took 2 hours of meticulous cleaning with rags, qtips and rubbing alcohol to remove the mess. It's amazing to see how much rubber degrades over nearly 37 years.

Dana - good shout on the 5mm washer suggestion on post #5. Worked a treat because my little clip had broken too and it kept switching sides without it.

Hit one snag. Cassettes now play, fast forward, rewind, change sizes great BUT, the output volume from every cassette I've tried is really low - almost inaudible unless I crank the volume to max. There's no bass, just a trickle of mid-range output. I've tried cleaning the head with alcohol and am out of ideas. The radio is full volume perfect, but I can't seem to get any meaningful gain from cassettes.

Any ideas?

[mark w]

i have my craig out of the car and the covers off and i am going to replace the ribbon cable to the door display.
how to remove the old one to install the new one?
how to remove the ribbon from the main board? just pull it out of the black plastic part?
how to remove the two flat bars on the door itself to remove the ribbon, or do you not?

thanks

[Elvis]

I can repair it completely during winter time.
PM me if interested. I'm located in Germany.

[Rhye]

how to remove the ribbon from the main board?
just pull it out of the black plastic part?

Yes.

how to remove the two flat bars on the door itself to remove the ribbon, or do you not?

You have to unclip the transparent window from the metal structure of the door and take the display & ribbon out. Then you need to unsolder the old ribbon from the display PCB and solder the new one.

[Malevy]

I can assist with Craig radio repairs (USA based).