1985 Fiero Radio Repair! | Saturday Projects 

To everyone saying I routed the belt wrong and also that I should clean the volume potentiometer to get rid of the static fully, GUESS WHAT?! You're absolutely right. Thank you so much for pointing these out to me, I really appreciate it :)

This is one of those projects that on one hand you think, "Is he ever gonna get that Fiero done?" On the other hand, you are going to be sorry to see it come to an end.

Easily the best restoration series on RU-vid!

Once you're done, you better get video of going to the previous owners house to get her reaction when she sees the car again so you can share that with us!

I am disabled, seriously ill and I don't have a drivers license, so I have absolutely no reason to watch car restoration videos, yet every time I see the notification for one of your videos I cant help but pause what I am watching, and watch your videos straight away!

I wish that this series would never come to an end... 🥺 Hint for the casette player: I think you are very very close! I used to repair and clean many of these old casette players, and my assumption would be in this case that as You mentioned, may be the belt is tight a bit, this is normal, usually, the RPM of the cheap versions are not controlled by microcontroller, but there is a tunable resistor (potentiometer) you can tune the engine PRM with, this can be on the PCB or inside the motor, but there is a hole covered with some cross-cut sponge like material, you can push a little screwdriver through. The tape speed should be around 4.26cm/s, but if you have a well known track, you can adjust the speed 99% fine, just via ears. ;) The other thing that can cause meowing are 1. that the grooves the belt are running in, can be dirty as well, these should be cleaned also. 2. The 2 rubber rollers can be dirty,. These can be cleaned only during operation, beacuse it is so hard to reach the whole surface and apply enough pressure on the ear cleaning pick to be able to remove the thousand year old dirt... 😉 On the other hand, the rubber roller may (does) shrink, especially when the car was sitting outside for decades, this should be checked also. During play, the roller is pushed to the chrome plated axle via spring, check there is enough spring force, so the tape won’t slip during play. I assume that the chrome plated axles which drive the rubber rollers can be turned easily by finger (of Finger 😉😜). If these inspection are performed and meowing still exists, the clutch mechanism(s, since You have autoreverse) should be checked. If the clutch is so hard, and the spring of the rubber roller(s) not tight enough it may happen that the tape is slipping between the roller and the chrome plated axle, but this situation is quite rare I think. If the meowing is the same independently from in which direction You are playing the tape I think the clutches are fine. (there is a very little chance that both are wrong exactly on the same way, I think) One remark: if You wish to use the player with other audio sources as you showed via smartphone, there is a much simpler way than using that horrible sound quality audio adapter tape: the cables ftom the 3.5mm jack connector can be soldered directly to the input of the amplifier module. Usually this is where the 3 cable (red, white, ground) of the head, (or more (?) cable in your case, since You have 2 heads becase of autorevese) is soldered on the PCB. I hope that this would help! Sorry for the novel! 😉 BR, Gery

I'm deeply appreciative that you decided to keep and fix the OEM head unit than slapping a aftermarket one :"3

Ronald, you are the finger we'll all missed, but didn't deserve. Thanks!

"just like any problem child pressing a hot iron against it is the obvious course of action" Im dead lmfao

Your skills and discipline are great. You are a model of a successful American man. Take it from an old geezer bookmaker, you're the real thing.

I'm really glad that I found this channel. One of the best on RU-vid.

I had a 1984 Fiero. My mother worked at Delco Electronics and she had a engineer friend that knew I had a Fiero and knew the OEM radio left much to be desired. He told her to have me drop the car off one morning at the gate. He put a OEM Bonneville radio in. It was really nice because it had the EQ built in and all the lights on the radio were red, which matched the interior lights of the Fiero perfectly. When I sold the Fiero I kept the radio and installed it in another Fiero. This time it was a 85. Loved that radio. I really like these videos.

We've got an 86 Trans Am radio packed away waiting for the day we could afford for it to be repaired. I have some electrical and soldering background and this particular video has shown me - hey, I can totally do this and not fuck it up. Thanks for this and all the other awesome videos in this series.

85, I remember it well. This ride has been alot of fun. Good job kid. Re live the nostalgia of the 80s for all of us oldsters that were in our teens back then. I was driving a 1974 Honda 350XL Motorcycle back then as my first mode of transportation, but I remember the afternoon that a rich boy buddy got a brand new car and brought it to school. A 1985 Pontiac Fiero, Red.

I just recommended your restoration to a luthier who was wondering if there was an audience for a multi video series watching him built a heritage Irish stringed instrument from scratch. I mean who is going to follow a kid tearing down one of GMs most cultish iconic platforms and painstakingly rebuild it to near factory specs in his garage over 2 freaking years? Apparently there are thousands of us enough to actually follow your patreon. And we are glued to our screens as you do the minutia of following the signal to a little lightbulb that 99.9% of us would just ignore. And one viewer who like turtles. I am again saddened to note that this project is coming to a close. But there you have it. The car is nearly done and you did it. And you brought us along for the ride in which now we find ourselves invested in your success. I hope the Canadian Luthier does plan on doing a similar series. I hope if he sees your series he will understand that an audience exists for such projects. Cars and Guitars. What else can I say?

I love that you have put this much love into a humble Iron Duke Fiero. Wonderful job.

Honestly, your content is easily the most entertaining and enjoyable on here. I’m tired of all the “influencer” crap pushed through RU-vid algorithms, so your videos are a welcome breath of fresh air..as opposed to the hot air blown up our a$$ daily. A genuine “thank you” for all the work, dedication, and perseverance on this project. I know it’s a LOT of work, but all your subscribers appreciate it much more than we can express.

here's the thing: i understand nothing of cars or electronics, but i'm having a hell of a good time watching you revive the fiero. cheers.

When I saw "Made in Japan" on the radio, then I knew it was worth fixing. Good job Ronald, keep up the great work.

So, this resonated with me more than most. In 1994 I had my first car and was 16. The radio lights were bad and it rarely worked. I knew nothing about electronics other than RC cars but I decided to do exactly what you did. I tore out the head unit and began to trace what was wrong. I ended up replacing some bulbs with LED's (yes, I knew nothing about resistance), and after days of discovering, I got it all working properly and it looked factory and I was thrilled. I am sure that a 1980's Fiero and a 1980's Subaru share the same pathetic sound system so I too know exactly what excitement you felt with this project. Great job as always! I am glad to see this at 42 years young. Props to you for giving me a time machine today in my memory banks. If I could go back and do it again I would in a heartbeat.

Ronald deserves an industry award for this series. I'm completely serious. Any employer would benefit from having him on the team.

I have to say, I never skip a single second of your videos. The subtle comments make me laugh out loud. Cheers to you man, and can't wait for more of your videos.

Man I remember way back when I watched part one of the Fiero restoration when it was posted 4 days ago man it was so long ago

12:33 lmao, dude you got yourself a V A P O R W A V E deck

I love that you spend so much time on a crap factory radio just to keep the extra bit of originality. I think this might be the best (non-over the top) car project on RU-vid. The other category obviously goes to BOM and Binky.

Hall & Oates cassette tape? This kid has an old soul . . . A good, old soul . . . Rock on Ronald . . .

Its old enough that the tape idler wheels (that the capstans roll against) have to be hard. They make a liquid that softens the wheels back to new. Also demagnetize the heads. That will make it sound better. If the belt is the right tension, not too tight or loose, the capacitors on the speed control board might need to be changed.

Dude that deck takes me back to every GM I owned for over 20yrs. Chevette to Bonneville to Silverado, plus many more...one stop parts bin special. XD

Such a fan, I wish this series would never end 😢

Hey Ronald, nice work. It was the thumbnail that got me to watch your video. I immediately knew that was a Delco Electronics radio. Not because I had a Fiero, but because my dad worked for Delco Radio, which did one more iteration to Delco Electronics. He worked for them from 1960 to the early 90's. There is a reasonable chance one of his patents is in that unit of yours. He has since made the great heap and is no longer scribbling out the differential equations on his church bulletin (possibly not listening entirely to the service?). But he was always working on mathematical electrical engineering equations even when not at work. Math, Physics, and engineering was his passion, and Delco Electronics made it possible for him to use that passion to raise a family. We were all truly thankful for his career and the existence it provided, and as a result, I was raised as a GM kid. Delco Electronics was a pretty interesting place. When my dad hired with them in the 60's, it was all about the power transistor. He used calculus and and algebra to figure out biasing of the circuitry to build transistor based audio amplifiers for cars radios. But then in the 70's Delco Electronics made the decision to start making their own integrated circuits. Commonly know as ICs. To do this, they also grew their own silicon. Nobody else was growing silicon except for the dudes in silicon valley and in Japan. But there they were, in Kokomo Indiana, growing vertical columns of silicon, then slicing wafers of silicon, masking off layers in what was almost was a photographic process, to build complete transistor circuitry onto wafers, that then would be sliced up and placed in an IC packages. But with the mass exodus, all research and development left Kokomo for suppliers who I guess are now located in China. It is sad to drive by the Research and Engineering building in Kokomo, for to this day it stands empty. A lot of thinking, long hours of problem solving and maybe even some stale cigarette smoke is still echoing around in there. I don't know if youtube lets you place links in comments, but in homage to my dad here is a link of his patents while he worked at Delco Electronics: patents.justia.com/inventor/burtron-d-schertz Thanks for reminding me of my upbringing, my Dad, Delco Electronics and even the beloved Fiero! I sooo miss my Dad to this day. Carry on your content creation Ronald! And I look forward to more of your content. I subscribed!

This is my favourite car on the internet, so many episodes, ups, downs, dramas, and good times. That was a really fantastic demonstration of undaunted common sense. Great work Ronald, looks like you are on the home straight.

Mr. Ron you are a talented, patient and brilliant man. After the third time of taking this radio apart, I would have thrown the thing in the trash. Brilliant Job!

12:31 Instant Vapowave Music for you car...

GM should give you an award for such a detailed and good restoration you are doing by yourself. I enjoy every chapter of the series. Greeting form México!

Why the hell does this video make me nostalgic for a time that ended like 15 years before i was born

This is going above and beyond on a restoration for a Fiero.... Most people would throw this radio in the trash and replace it with something much better and more modern. Ronald, it's quite impressive, you are truly dedicated to a full restoration. Still.... I think that radio belongs in the trash.... just my opinion.

love the “neighborhood creepo” 'stache

Ronald seeing you Diagnose the radio and do soldering is amazing

18:30 made me smile... you've got some loyal subscribers... including me. Been here since the Iron Man helmet video...

You are restoreing a vehicle that many people have forgotten about, or don’t care about. However, that doesn’t matter. You are doing a wonderful job. Truthfully, I haven’t followed along as much as some, but I can tell the quality of your videos has improved a lot. I haven’t seen any restoration videos where someone disassembles the radio. Most would have fit a Pioneer Super Tuner 3 in the dash which is what would have been done in the 80s. Really nice job with this series. I prefer classics from the 60s, but I enjoy what you are doing here. Keep up the good work. Thanks for taking the time to produce the content.

Ronny: -"...the display doesn't work and neither does the tape deck." My immediate thought after having watched many Techmoan, Technology connection, LGR and 8-Bit guy videos: IT'S THE DRIVE BELT! IT HAS TO BE!

So glad you kept the factory radio! Nothing spoils an older car more than a periodic incorrect radio

My favorite part of this series is the running edit gag of you jumping in to tell yourself "Nice move smart guy. Good going."

God I love the sound your Fiero makes. It's a red two door coupe with pop-up headlights and when turned on it sounds like an asthmatic vacuum cleaner.

Ronnie is channeling his inner dad with the stache and glasses. I feel like he's gonna call me "Champ" and then offer to take me in his Fiero to go get ice cream.

I wish there were more restoration videos like this on RU-vid. I like older cars, but I’m not a “gear head” and I get tired of the endless parade of the typical “classic cars” that people restore (i.e. how many Mustangs can you see in a lifetime). It’s nice to see someone spending the time to restore a car that means something to them rather than playing to the masses.

Well done Ron to keep the original deck! That took a lot of guts to take that all apart, to try to fix it, but you pulled it off. great job!

This is easily genius at work. That restoration is sublime.

My complete respect and admiration for getting that old bird running again. You have the patience of a saint.

Ah, the old Delco UM6 radio. Rebuilt/repaired many of those at an A/C Delco radio shop. Blown belts were so common, I could speak the part number from memory. The '84 one way play deck belt number is 1224370, if anyone is interested. Cold solder joints plagued all GM radio's from that era. Great job getting the display going.

7:57 "Tha bigga tha glob, tha betta tha job"

Really nice to see, that there are more people around my age who wants tape decks in their car.

FYI: the "little wheels" in the tape deck are called 'Pinch rollers" They can be cleaned of magnetic tape coating like the head and capstan with iso alcohol. In addition, hard and glazed ones can be rejuvenated lightly with # 400 - 600 paper. It can help speed issues. Back in the day there were wet cassettes for preventative maintenance and repair. So glad you got a belt.

These were very high quality stereos back in their day. My father had an Astro-van with the same stereo he bought in 85, but it had a small Equalizer on it too. He played LOTS of tapes in it. The front-loading tape drives used in these is much better than the side-loading tape mechanisms used in the newer Delco, and practically all aftermarket stereos (Most of which are built by a Chinese company called "Tanashen" These decks, when new had VERY stable sound with minimal amounts of wow and flutter. My father used to play George Winston piano music in his.

It's oddly satisfying seeing an oddball Fiero be restored to factory condition.

Awwww the memories!! My 1984 Buick Skyhawk had the exact same stereo. Ahhh to be 16 again!!

Hall and Oates: Who's this Ronald guy playing our stuff?

when you rebuild a car you really rebuild a car! Outstanding work!

That “we just got a letter” remix moved me to tears

Just so you know... This is the best series on the internet.

When restoring an old circuitboard, that has been, and most likely will be, exposed to moisture, a fresh coating of sealant is in order. This prevents electrical issues, like fires and such.

Still the best series ever been here since before the fiery and will stay even after

I’m gonna be sad when this series is over.

Amazing work! Clean those tape deck buttons!! Add a little white paint too all of them too with a little brush! It will really make it pop

"Not gonna happen" *The same synthwave track everyone has heard in a time lapse on some vlog or another*

Mad respect for saving that radio

When doing soldering on circuit boards it's ideal to using the thinnest solder you can get to do the job.

The only radio that suits that interior, well done for taking the time.

Unknown forgotten feature: press the top volume button while the radio and car is off,without key in and the time will pop up

This video is so inspiring. Repair before tossing out. Your very calm demeanor makes your projects very enjoyable. Thank you!

Hey, this is joe from the future... that next episode you uploaded was awesome👍

rare to see someone actually fixing and using the stock radio on 80s 90s cars, well done!

The wow and flutter issue could still be a belt issue. The method I use to get the right size is threading a string through the tape path, measuring the string and multiplying the length by .95 to get the proper belt length.

You have got to be one of the most dedicated car enthusiasts I've ever seen. Not that it's crazy to fix a radio... but you easily spent more time on that than anyone else ever would. I'd have been like "well, that don't work" and thrown an after market HU in. But Mr. Ronald here is all about being perfectly period correct no matter the time investment.

I'm willing to bet that the Auto-Reverse doesn't work in the configuration that you showed in this video. You have the belt on incorrectly, both the capstans are turning the same direction. It's a little difficult to explain, but the belt has to go under the capstan closest to the motor, where you have it going over it. The far capstan is fine.

My cousin had a red Fiero in high school in the mid-90s. We got in so much trouble with that thing. These videos bring back some great memories for me. I've got some AC/DC cassettes that are well acquainted with that radio. :-D

I want to see you drive it to the previous owner you bought it from and show it to him. You promised him you woul take care of it. I would love to see the reaction now that you have made the Fiero whole once again.

There's just something interesting and satisfying about watching someone go to great lengths to restore an obsolete piece of technology that most people would throw away and replace with something newer.

Why i get "I would walk 500 miles - The Proclaimers" in my head XD

I have to applaud you effort to repair/restore the GM factory radio. So many of those radios were pitched back in the day because of those failures.

Opening to blues clues😂👌

Thanks for sharing the journey. My favorite restoration series.

The copyright gods have spoken. I hate having to reupload a masterpiece

This one of my favorite series on RU-vid

"I don't know what I'm doing..." I thought I was the only one singing that song. ;D

That thumbnail is *perfection.*

I like turtles

Respect for the old tech! Got kind of a soft spot for fluorescent displays. The rosey copyright free tune was pretty close to what was on a lot of cassettes back then too. And thank you for showing how they sell replacement belts.

Dude where is the contact cleaner and lithium grease 😅

This post caused me to get off my rear end and pull out my own car radio and fix it. Power of suggestion and following by example.

Finally!!!!!!!

I had a 92 Trans Sport with the same radio. That was great to see you save that bad boy! Well done sir!

I have a circa late 80's Alpine Head unit you can have to replace that Delco unit. lol

I had an 85 GT and the radio worked great. The speakers were also still working great. Owned it from 96 til 98 when it blew up

If you don't know what you're doing, Then you have an opportunity to learn. Look at it that way.

When the Fiero is done you have to save another car that's otherwise going to the scrapper! 👍Love your videos and your sense of humor! 😊

Let’s gooooooooo 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

My parents had a Pontiac 6000 with this same radio, only it was the version without the tape player. Brings back such memories.

8:30 bruh..... i almost spit my water all over my screen...

These videos are an emotional rollercoaster to watch