Geo Metro factory Delco radio question

[udel]

Hi,
This may be the wrong forum for this, but the digital display in my Delco radio has faded out to where I can barely see it anymore. I'm lucky enough to have the cd/cassette player, so I don't want to just throw it out. I do have another Delco radio that is just an AM/FM, that I had taken out of the car at one time and replaced with this CD version. Are there any radio experts out here that could suggest what is wrong with mine, and would it be possible to take parts out of the AM/FM radio and put them into the CD radio with no major problems? They were both manufactured the same year. Is it messy to even open up these radio's? If I had to guess, I would say the digital display has gradually burned out over time. To find someone to fix it these days seems impossible, as everyone wants the price of a new one to fix it. Thanks, John

[hot_sd]

Unfortunately the car service manual does not cover servicing the internals of the radio. You could try contacting GM and seeing if they do have a separate service manual for the radio/cd unit. Main thing to do is to try to get a hold of a circuit diagram. My guess is that the drive to the display has failed (usually an IC). If you know how to troubleshoot with a schematic then you probably can swap out the faulty part with a good one from the other radio once you know what the problem is. If you are lucky it may just be a connection issue or dry solder joint. If the circuit board has been manufactured with leaded components you can work on it yourself. If they are surface mount then you would probably have to take it to a place than has the correct equipment to work with SMT devices and have them swap out the faulty part.

[udel]

Thanks for the reply. After making some calls yesterday, I decided it was going to cost me the price of a new one to send it somewhere, so I figured I might as well open the radio up myself and see if I could see something. What I found was that the two light bulbs that light the LCD screen were burnt out. Fortunately, I had the AM/FM radio I had taken out. I just unsoldered those and replaced the burnt out bulbs in my CD version. Works great.

[hot_sd]

Good to hear you fixed it. I misread your post - since mine has an LED display I thought yours had that too - since you say it is LCD I guess it is not the same model. These days many electronic items are not worth fixing and so much of the stuff is integrated onto a single chip that all they would be doing is replacing that chip and most of the charges would be labor.