Volume Toggle/Flipper Radios from late 80s/early 90s

[TecNickal]

In an effort to prepare my 1990 Town Car for sale, I wanted to install an OEM radio. The car has a JBL setup - speakers, 2 amps and a sub.

I sourced 4 different early 90s radios and they all had different results....
2 had no response from control panel (including one automatically stuck in TAPE)
1 had functional screens and buttons but no sound (I just read that the jumper needs to be plugged in to the rear to function)
1 Ate the tape and buttons were not functional.

Are these radios worth doing anything with? Are they considered somewhat worth fixing? I found one thread that was discussing some of this from before Covid, but that's all. Didn't know if the electrical components inside were of poor quality making them not worth repairing.

They all cost $20-30 each at U Pull It. Hate to chuck them or return to store if worth repairing. One from a 91 Town Car was rebuilt in 1993(!!!) by Downtown Radio in Charlotte, NC. I knew they were troublesome but not so early on.

I also have two radios from late 80s town cars with what feels like broken volume buttons.

I found a 94 Grand Marquis LS with the updated push button for volume control and cleaner/sleaker 90s look, plugged in - installed jumper on upper port and it sounds pretty good! Without jumper you could barely hear it. Have yet to try the tape.

[gadget73]

ah the flappy paddle radio. I used three to build one that works. They're "a bit shit" as the Brits might say. One had problems with the foil things behind the buttons so some didn't work, one someone had damaged physically and destroyed the power supply that runs the display, and I forget what ailed the other. May have just been green instead of the blue that I needed. I did a full re-cap, many of the caps were oozing and causing problems.

The slghtly later radio has problems with caps too, that one I had to de-solder several chips from the board to get the leakage out from underneath in order to make it work. They are a direct plug-in for the flappy paddle radio though and other than the leaky cap thing may be a slightly better setup. I think those were about 1992-1995 or so.

The flappy paddle radio is far easier to re-cap than the later one since it mostly uses larger caps that are not nearly as irritating to deal with, but its also got ribbon cables inside that are delicate. I think mine has 3 or 4 leads in the one going to the volume control board bypassed with wire to make it function.

The jumper thing depends on whether it was a CD model or not. Some did not come in cars with a CD player and had an internal jumper as a result. No external plug required. If yours came from a CD application though it definitely needs that plug to make it go. Everything will seem to work, but no sound.

eating the tape is usually bad belts. Not sure on the button thing but I think those only actually work if the logic controls think its in the proper mode so bad belts could possibly make it not respond correctly. Never really dug into that. Mine technically plays tapes but it sounds terrible and I hate tapes anyway. I did re-belt it but I did not rebuild the tape head amp, and the head azimuth is probably set wrong too. It plays but its low and muffled.


I can tell you its very possible to bluetooth a flappy paddle radio, and its not even super hard. Also not real hard to do an aux in, but you need at least some of the cable to the CD changer. I haven't figured out a source for that connector. Same process to aux the later 90s radio, no idea on BT.