Cleaning up a Craig cassette deck

[kobachi]

I'm the proud new owner of VIN 6248 (Nov '81), just purchased from DMC Northwest this Saturday. The car is almost totally stock, save for some repairs and a Wings-a-Loft system I had installed at purchase time. This includes the Craig AM/FM/Cassette deck.

The LCD on the cassette door is not functional, but the radio works (and sounds) just fine. The speakers all seem to be in good condition and sound about as good as they could for a 1981 stock stereo! AM/FM radio works fine.

However, the cassette deck does not work very well. With actual cassettes (Thriller and BTTF :rofl:) there's a ton of wow and flutter, and different frequency bands come and go as the tape plays. If I push down and (rolling-wheels direction) forward on the cassette a little bit, the sound quality greatly improves to how I would expect it to sound, but the improvement doesn't stick and reverts as soon as I remove the finger pressure.

Quality from a minijack/cassette adapter is a little better -- obviously there's no wow/flutter because there's no physical tape rolling, but the bands moving in and out problem remains. Additionally, there's almost an echo or reverb present, like the stereo channels aren't quite in-sync. Pushing forward on the cassette adapter doesn't affect a change in sound, but pushing down on it results in crystal-clear audio that even has a little bass kick! Unfortunately pushing down on the adapter causes the "auto-reverse" feature to kick in, which kills the audio. Removing the pressure puts it back to baseline.

I don't know much about cassette decks, but it seems like there is likely both a head alignment problem and some worn-out moving parts. I'm likely to replace the whole unit with a modern unit soon, but I'd sure love to get this one in good working condition before taking it out. And part of me does love the nostalgia of listening to era-appropriate cassettes on the stock radio.

Has anyone opened one of these up, or could anyone perhaps offer some troubleshooting and/or repair advice? I bought a cleaner/demagnetizer cassette from RadioShack (and now see that it has very poor reviews online), but it didn't seem to help much.

Even a workaround to disable the auto-reverse feature and perhaps build a little shim to apply pressure to a cassette adapter would work for now!

[sdg3205]

There are a number of reasons why the playback is poor. The elastic bands that drive the unit will have stretched, the heads are likely dirty etc etc.

The LCD can be fixed but use of the tape deck perpetuates damage to the LCD connection.

I took my Craig to an old radio specialist and had an iPod aux input installed for $120. Love it.

[mluder]

I opened mine shortly after getting my car. My wife had gone to Goodwill to get me some old 80s cassettes as a gift. First one in got stuck - wouldn't play, wouldn't eject. I opened up the radio to see if I could manually extract it because once a tape is in the radio ceases to function.

What did I find? First I could not get the tape out. Second, the belts had turned to mush. I ended up taking it to an electronics person - older guy who repairs stereos and TVs. He fixed my dashboard clock by re-soldering a few points. He managed to extract the tape from the radio. I asked him about rebuilding the tape mechanism and he said it would be possible but trying to track down the right belts would not be easy. Personally I just don't think he wanted to do it.

My advice - find someone who repairs electronics and has done so for a long time. These older guys are typically stuffed away in some tiny shop somewhere. They used to fix this stuff all the time 30 years ago. These days most people just replcae things so younger electronics person will probably be of little help. If I could find down down here in Portland, you should have no trouble finding a place like that in Seattle.

BTW - My deck still doesn't work though the radio does. I kinda put off trying to fix it.

Also, you should check out the Pacific Northwest DeLorean Club. Great group of people and a great resource. Dues are cheap and well worth it. Tell Arnie Brandon I sent you.
http://www.pndc.org/


Cheers
Steven

[David T]

Unless you are a stickler for originality don't waste any time or money on the old Craig. Either live with it, upgrade it or there are places that will gut the thing and replace the insides with modern components but still look like the original. Look up Classic Radio. This option is not cheap and you will not get all of the whistles and bells you can get by buying a whole new head. When you do something with the radio you should also replace the speakers and the speaker wiring.
David Teitelbaum

[ccurzio]

Unless you are a stickler for originality don't waste any time or money on the old Craig.

I agree with this completely. If you have no plans to do something like Concours, ditch the Craig and get something modern. Less power consumption, better audio quality, more features, you can't go wrong.

[Ryan S.]

I replaced mine shortly after. I tried to fix my Craig but gave up. I bought this one for $30 + 1-din radio face plate from a local owner (Thanks Clint).
Didn't want to spend too much on radio and I don't need any hi-fidelity. I just need a decent radio plus a place to charge my iPhone. It sounds much better than Craig.

Other D owner has installed and reviewed. http://dmctalk.org/showthread.php?2265-Stereo-Review-Dual-XML8100

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/310%2BSB7rCdL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

[Elvis]

If you or somebody else wants to sell his Craig - I'm looking for one.
Tape doesn't matter, display can be dead, no problem.

Thanks,
Elvis & 6548

[kobachi]

If you or somebody else wants to sell his Craig - I'm looking for one.
Tape doesn't matter, display can be dead, no problem.

I'm going to have a closer look at mine this weekend. If I decide to get rid of it, you'll be the first to know!