'94 buick park ave, delco radio stuck in station scan, fix ?

My 1st thought is perhaps the button is slightly stuck, but if the indicator light is out, probably not. A really terrific resource for electronic problems is sci.electronics.repair. Very helpful group of informed professionals. If anyone can help, they can.

Rick

maybe try removing all power from the radio for about 10 minutes so it completly resets

you probably have ot remove the power connector from the rear.... maybe there is a hidden reset button like most CPU stuff has

Mark

Hi...

Good idea; but first make sure you have the passcode handy!

Ken

hmm... what passcode would that be ? where do i find that ? and what would you do with that ?

my thought as well so i was rocking pushing wiggling various buttons to see if there are any worn or sticky buttons, this car only has 44K on it so very little service and little radio interaction as well so sticky button would be my only hope there.

well i cross posted this to sci/elec/repair but it is rather uninteresting problem i suppose.

Will it pick up local stations as it scans, or is it totally "deaf"? Have you checked the antenna connection? If you're in a metro area, try running a 4 foot or so piece of solid wire right into the center conductor of the antenna jack. If the tuner is working, this should be enough for it to pick up a station.

Did you check all the fuses? This may not be the problem but it's simple to check. I was surprised at the way the fuses affected the stock Delco radio in an '89 Corsica. On most older aftermarket radios, the "ignition" wire was the main power for the radio, and the "battery" wire just maintained the station memory. If you didn't hook up the "battery" wire, the radio would work, but would forget all the station presets when you turned off the ignition key. The Delco in the Chevy had "ignition" and "battery" power as well, but the "battery" power seemed to actually run a lot of the digital part of the radio. I managed to blow the fuse that supplied battery power to the radio, and when I turned on the key, the tuner was unresponsive and I only got static. I could make the static louder and softer with the volume knob, but couldn't tune anything.

Maybe the button is sticking, or another button is stuck down. Has the radio gotten any coffee spilled inside of it? You might be able to disassemble the radio and clean the button contacts. You might also take a look at the interconnections between the various circuit boards (solder joints, plug-in connectors) and resolder or reseat the connectors.

Another Delco from a junkyard. The last time I shopped for an entry-level car stereo about two years ago, it was hard to find one that didn't have several square inches of disco lights on the face.

Matt Roberds

Thanks for reply, radio is still not functioning.

Yes the radio will tune to a station and play it clearly (no static or distortion) pausing for about 3-5 seconds and then start scanning again just like it should when in scan mode.

So that is why i say it is stuck in scan mode, it may not be in scan mode but radio behaves that way. Maybe it is really seek mode problem ?

when one toggles the scan button a little SC indicator toggles on and off so i assume the button is not stuck and is sending the appropriate signal.

when i press seek mode the radio immediately starts seeking so i can interrupt the pause of 3-5 seconds by using the seek button so i presume seek function is working ?

have not but will check

that would be next option but i was hoping some one had this problem and maybe it is a familiar problem with a known solution

same here i have pioneers in other cars with lots of blue flashing lcd stuff and i really just want something mild, Alpine probably work ? Blaupunkt used to have lots of basic black faces

Thanks agian robb

The problem is probably that there are no Country And Western or 'Jesus' stations within range. That what I've found while driving the wide open highways in the western U.S. When I hit scan those are the _only_ stations that it'll stop on.

"i have pioneers in other cars with lots of blue flashing lcd stuff and i really just want something mild, Alpine probably work ? Blaupunkt used to have lots of basic black faces"

BTW Robb I've found Crutchfield generally has a pretty good selection of car audio. There are probably cheaper places but I've found their service to be quite good. I searched their using your make/model, they have cd players starting at $99.