So my very recently acquired '85 GS is now running fairly well, considering it sat for three years in a barn not even covered (the car that is, not the barn), and the radio and cassette player light up beautifully at night with their dash light matching orange glow, but but but NEITHER one of them works. The P.O. said they died independently, the radio first, then the cassette player. So I remove them, take them apart, AHA, a fuse! But it tests okay, so I figure the units are pooched. So I go looking for some gently used units. I find on E-Bay something that the seller is calling radio and cassette power amp units for a '85 Rx-7, I PM him to ask if these are the radio and cassette player, they reply no (dummy), they are the amps for the radio and cassette, sooooooo am I missing something here? I have assumed (perhaps a bad thing to do) that the radio and cassette player were basically self-contained units, do they feed into some other units that I do not know about and can't see i.e. are located somewhere hidden? It's not fun driving tune-less. Any ideas fellow Rx'ers?

 

Yes, you have the radio and cassette unit, plus one or two amps located under the storage bins. A failure of any of these items will cause a lack of tunes. However, if it was the amps then the radio and the cassette would have died at the same time...

 

Best and easiest way is to remove old casette, radio, and amp/s and simply install a new deck. Unless of course, you want to keep it stock in which case Ebay would be the best bet on that. Also if you install a new deck, it is easiest to run new speaker wires to speaker locations instead of tapping the wires since they go through the stock amps. Even buying a 100 dollar deck from walmart would give you 2X the power to the speakers than the stock amps put out. Should also replace speakers if you want them to last. Souns expensive, but in the long run it will be easier and less of a pain. Besides, once you do it once you wont have to do it again.

 

Thanks all, I will pull the storage bins tonight in search of the elusive amps!

 

There is the Radio amp by the fuse box,
The Radio has a tiny fuse inside,
The Cassette Player has a tiny fuse inside,
The amps have an inline fuse holder to each.

And as far as running new wires to the speakers (if you replace the head unit)-

You don't have to go too far. Just run the 4 speaker wires to where the
stock amps are (in the bins) and tap into them there. It's a 4 wire plug for
each pair of speakers.