Car Radio

S

SteveIOW

Well-Known Member
Joined
3 Oct 2008
Messages
158
Location
Isle of Wight
Visit site
Back in 1980 I purchased a fairly expensive Toshiba Radio / Cassette which I fitted in my car and later tranferred to a new Nissan Sunny in 1984, as it was superior to the Clarion built in set that came with the car. When I sold the Sunny in 1988 I refitted the Clarion Radio and installed the Toshiba in my sailing cruiser where it has been in use ever since. I think I've had my money's worth and it now has a couple of faults:. the display panel does illuminate (probably just a bulb) and the cassette drive doesn't work (worn belt?). Am quite happy to purchase a new radio/cd player but there are two features I don't want to lose:
1 The pre-sets on the old Toshiba are the manual push button in type so when I leave the boat on its mooring with all the electrics isolated the pre-set channels are not lost. I don't want to have to retune all the radio pre-sets each time I go out to the boat.
2. The Toshiba has LW so it still gives me the Shipping Forecast and Test Match Cricket without resorting to the iphone. I don't go in marinas so can't get WiFi or even a phone signal sometimes..

Any good suggestions on I what I should purchase please to suit my requirements
 
SteveIOW said:
Back in 1980 I purchased a fairly expensive Toshiba Radio / Cassette which I fitted in my car and later tranferred to a new Nissan Sunny in 1984, as it was superior to the Clarion built in set that came with the car. When I sold the Sunny in 1988 I refitted the Clarion Radio and installed the Toshiba in my sailing cruiser where it has been in use ever since. I think I've had my money's worth and it now has a couple of faults:. the display panel does illuminate (probably just a bulb) and the cassette drive doesn't work (worn belt?). Am quite happy to purchase a new radio/cd player but there are two features I don't want to lose:
1 The pre-sets on the old Toshiba are the manual push button in type so when I leave the boat on its mooring with all the electrics isolated the pre-set channels are not lost. I don't want to have to retune all the radio pre-sets each time I go out to the boat.
2. The Toshiba has LW so it still gives me the Shipping Forecast and Test Match Cricket without resorting to the iphone. I don't go in marinas so can't get WiFi or even a phone signal sometimes..

Any good suggestions on I what I should purchase please to suit my requirements
Click to expand...
You obviously like it, just get it fixed
 
Its been a very long time since i worked on tape drives, but from a flaky memory the cassette deck doesn't usually have a drive belt. The tape is drawn through by a pinch roller holding the tape against a direct drive spindle near the tape head. The spools just collect the tape, and usually have fibre clutches which can be cleaned. The spindle and pinch rollers can be easily cleaned of all the hardened shiny deposits with cotton buds and meths
 
Last edited:
I bought the Sony DSX-M80 which saves settings when power is removed, but doesn't have the LW facility. It does have a physical remote, which would have been a deal breaker for me.

I like it a lot ?
 
My Sharp radio cassette is still going well. Have a Blaupunkt in the old Corsa, too! There are lots of sources for new belts and other replaceable items for home HiFi tape equipment so might be worth thinking about repairing the unit you have.
 
Again around 1980 I bought a Hitachi Car Radio, and fitted it in a boat. What made it unusual is that although it had a tape player you could record from the radio to the cassette, which I thought useful for recording Shipping Forecasts.
 
If you sail from place to place, presets may be less useful than and RDS radio which tells you the station names as you scan?
Or maybe a radio like the one in my S-reg Mondeo, which listed all the stations it could see in a menu?

There are loads of cheap car stereos with sockets for USB sticks and SD cards, so it's probably time to ditch cassettes?
Long Wave is a problem though.
I can't immediately see any aftermarket 'head units' with LW.
 
I recently replaced my boat car radio with a generic Android display device with a big screen. The radio does remember the stations can't remember if it's got LW but it connects to the web so you could get cricket that way but it does so much more. Runs Navionics and Seawi NMEA repeater. Stores thousands of songs, plays videos, even has GPS. All for a lot less than £100. You can't go wrong.
 
KAM said:
I recently replaced my boat car radio with a generic Android display device with a big screen. The radio does remember the stations can't remember if it's got LW but it connects to the web so you could get cricket that way but it does so much more. Runs Navionics and Seawi NMEA repeater. Stores thousands of songs, plays videos, even has GPS. All for a lot less than £100. You can't go wrong.
Click to expand...
Hi KAM,
Do you have any links to the one you bought. I've looked at a few for the new boat, but it's sometimes difficult to sort out the correct specs so it'll do what we want with the android side of things and navigation. Any recommendation would be a big help.
 
AngusMcDoon said:
It says it has LW reception and remembers pre-sets without power. (y)
Click to expand...
Correct MW, LW and both FM and DAB - but I haven’t hooked up a DAB aerial yet. Have wired up a permanent 12 volt supply + another power through the main cct breaker, so can’t confirm that it maintains the radio stations without 12 volt.
I’ve set up the Bluetooth to my phone so I can play music from my phone, the side effect is that even when listening to the radio, when my phone rings then the radio is muted. No more scrabbling round to mute the radio !
I did a lot of research to find a suitable radio / music player and this was by far the best available.
 
KAM said:
I recently replaced my boat car radio with a generic Android display device with a big screen. The radio does remember the stations can't remember if it's got LW but it connects to the web so you could get cricket that way but it does so much more. Runs Navionics and Seawi NMEA repeater. Stores thousands of songs, plays videos, even has GPS. All for a lot less than £100. You can't go wrong.
Click to expand...
I have one also...great for Navionics, Prime Netflix, Spotify etc... It remembers channels when powered off...(I switch off everything and when I power up the radio comes back to life where I left off...
 
greeny said:
Hi KAM,
Do you have any links to the one you bought. I've looked at a few for the new boat, but it's sometimes difficult to sort out the correct specs so it'll do what we want with the android side of things and navigation. Any recommendation would be a big help.
Click to expand...


Sorry I missed your post. This is the one I bought. The original ad has gone but I think most of the generics on eBay are very similar. Seem to have gone up a bit now. Very impressed. I put mine on a VESA tv mount. It swings round over the chart table or back round to face the cabin for entertainment.
Screenshot_20211224-092911_eBay.jpg
 
Car radios ? Tape decks ? Heathens!

I binned the car radio, which in a lot of places struggled to pick up many stations. I fitted a 14V soundbar, with cable and Bluetooth inputs, runs off of the boat batteries with a small DC-DC converter for a stable power supply. There are loads of similar soundbars or speakers. I have a Radioplayer app' on my phone, which seems to have pretty much every radio station in the Country. I also have a laptop onboard, between the laptop and the phone i can play any station i want or any stored music from either device.

I also have a 14V TV, which is connected to the soundbar with an optical cable. Great sound from the TV, whether it's live TV or internet TV from the laptop or downloaded movies or boxed sets.
 
Get one that picks music from USB stick or your iphone particularly if you sail. Makes taking your music to the boat easier.

Tape drives and CD drives are also power hungry which matters not in a car, but help drain batteries in a cruising yacht. So annoying if you dim lights to relax at anchor and the and CD or tape grind to a halt after a few track and cabin lights merely glimmer as you look to try and find the fault. Early car radios used an amplifier style that uses high residual current (class A) as it is easier to produce high quality with that set up and they assume you have alternator giving lots of power mostly when used
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top