Gremlins in the radio now

[DaraSue]

So today a few miles outside of North Platte, I noticed that my radio display was dark. The other buttons were still lit, but the digital thing that shows the clock and the station was dead. I was also getting a whiff of a kind of plastic-ish smell that might have been something melting but didn't really smell acrid the way I thought wiring fires were supposed to. It was more like the way blank VHS tapes smell when you first unwrap them.

I pulled over at the next exit and poked around behind the a/c panel some more, but nothing looked visibly amiss. The 11 fuse was intact too.

When I started back up the clock was working again but I left the radio off just to be on the safe side. Possibly related, possibly coincidence but when restarting I had another occurrence of the issue where I turn the key and the dash lights come on but the engine doesn't crank. And once again it magically went away after I cycled the light switch. There definitely seems to be something weird going on in that panel. I hope the gremlins don't start gnawing on anything I can't live without for another 600 miles...

[Lwanmtr]

Is it a new light switch? There seems to be (based on your other threads) a common thing..the light switch.

As for the plastic smell, could you tell where it was coming from?

[DaraSue]

Is it a new light switch? There seems to be (based on your other threads) a common thing..the light switch.

As for the plastic smell, could you tell where it was coming from?

The switch is original AFAIK. The seller didn't mention replacing it and there was no reason at the time for any of the shops that have worked on it to have done it. There may be some weird wiring behind it, though. When I was first trying to troubleshoot the random starting issue I showed some pix of it to my engineer friend and fellow DeLorean enthusiast and he commented on the red plastic taps and wiring setup in/out of them in a way that implied that wasn't standard.

The smell definitely did seem to be coming from the vicinity of the radio. I noticed if I stuck my fingers in the tape deck it felt pretty warm in there. The a/c panel still seems to have the original light bulbs and it gets unpleasantly hot to the touch so I'm wondering if that's a factor in all this. Getting those changed out for LEDs was on my list of stuff for DMCMW, assuming nothing else important conks out before I get there...

It's the ASI radio, btw.

[Lwanmtr]

Definately have the guys at DMCMW look at light switch and the wiring back in there. Even the original lights shouldnt produce that much heat.
LED is an ez upgrade, and pretty cheap too. I decided early on to replace all the old lights with led's, since I was having to replace a number of them anyway.

What is a tape deck? Hehe..just kidding is ASI a brand? Original radio? Mine had an Alpine stereo in it (but I sold that cause I want to put a modern thingy in it with gps and hamster videos)

[DaraSue]

Definately have the guys at DMCMW look at light switch and the wiring back in there. Even the original lights shouldnt produce that much heat.
LED is an ez upgrade, and pretty cheap too. I decided early on to replace all the old lights with led's, since I was having to replace a number of them anyway.

What is a tape deck? Hehe..just kidding is ASI a brand? Original radio? Mine had an Alpine stereo in it (but I sold that cause I want to put a modern thingy in it with gps and hamster videos)

Yeah, it's the original radio. Or at least an original radio. The seller mentioned having a collection of them so I think he might have put it in and done the wiring. Supposedly the tape deck works but tragically I can't find my Back to the Future soundtrack tape so what's the point?

[Lwanmtr]

I may still have that cassette..and or cd...lol