1993 - 1996 Delco Radio 101

[TraceZ]

I've been spending some time messing around with these Delco radios. I've got some things to share.

First off... The radio is made of 3 basic components that seperate easily, with no real electronic skill required.

1) The face / display / knobs and buttons

2) The CD mechanism

3) The tuner / amp / preamp

All of these style Delco radios have section 1 and 2 in common. If it is Bose or not does not matter. The components are interchangable.

section 3 differed between Bose and non bose. In my pictures you can see both side by side. The heat synch is the obvious give-away. The Bose has the small heat synch because there is no internal amplifier. The Bose system uses external amps. The more robust heat synch is for the standard non-Bose model with onboard amp.

Any of these Delco radios can be converted from Bose to non-Bose and back by simply swapping out section 3 of the head unit. Pretty cool, huh!

In my Z, I'm running a Bose section 3. It has line level outputs that I run to my Soundstream 5 channel amp. Bridged to 3 channels, running components in the doors and a sub in the trunk it sounds pretty decent.

Here are the pics:

[Christopherrr]

I'm more intrigued by the A&W Root Beer can in the back ground more for some reason. LOL!



Cool stuff...

[DeWynter]

I wonder how many other GM Radios are this way...

[2Fbodcru]

That's interesting - so how do I unlock my Monsoon am/fm CD player without having to spend money at the dealer

BTW, I have an oak table just like yours

[bn_bullet]

TraceZ,

Thanks for sharing the info on the radios. It is quite interesting. Have you identified any good sources for these radios or possibly even the individual components? Like many factory CD players, the one in my car will occasionally get hung up on a CD whereby it makes several strange noises for 30-60 seconds and usually will then eject the CD. Sometimes, it will do the same thing when a a CD is inserted. Maybe I can just replace the CD mechanism.

Brian

[TraceZ]

I'd hazard to guess that several other GM radios use the same exact CD mechanism, and it would be fully interchangable. Ebay seems to be a pretty good source for them. I also have info on a electronis repair shop in Florida that has really good prices to rebuild the CD component.

As far as unlocking a radio, I have seen the procedure posted, I just cant recall where.

[2Fbodcru]

As far as unlocking a radio, I have seen the procedure posted, I just cant recall where.

Yeah, there's a way to do it - I just took it out and put in a new unit - I'm going to look into it one of these days. It would have been nice if the previous owner had written down the code somewhere, so I could have cleared it and put in my own code