I have a stock, pristine 88 GXL. It has roughly 30k original miles. I want to keep the whole car as stock as possible. My big problem right now is that the OEM stereo has given up the ghost. CD no longer plays, afraid to try the cassette... radio still works. Is there a way to rebuild one of these stereos or is there an aftermarket company making replacement units. Every used unit I have looked at, the sellers won't verify that the unit still works. I am stumped. Any helpful ideas would be appreciated.

 

Do the lights and displays still work?
Does the AM/FM radio still work?
Have you checked fuses and connections?

 

Lights work, am/fm work.

when I put a disc into the cd player, it turns on, put won't pull the disc in and load it... just flashes and then turns it's self off.

cassette doesn't matter that much to me. Any cassettes I have are ancient and were replaced by cds long ago.

 

How comfortable are you with taking it apart and checking on miniature mechanical items?

There's gotta be a small plastic gear train and some rubber rollers that may have something jammed in them... Or potentially the rubber rollers have disintegrated, in which case you'll need to fabricate some substitutes.

Cassette can still be useful as an Aux in for an MP3 player. Use one of those cassette adapters with the earphone cord.

 

Or you could remove all mystery and simply send it to Pioneer and have them re-do your unit. Pretty much a flat fee last I had mine done. The CD is a component unit in the S4's, so you'll at least have regular radio tunes while you're waiting for it to turn around.

The cassette probably just needs a replacement drive belt.

 

Wasn't aware that this service exists.

 

It's been a couple of years since I had the work done on my S4 head unit, so I can only assume it's still available. I was able to simply drop mine off and pick up at their facility here in the LA area.

 

Factory Radio Service, Car Factory Radio Services

they installed an AUX input on my stock 88 radio and quoted me to repair it so all the lights work and fix the cassette player. Turnaround was about 1 week. Good guys.