Greetings - stumbled on this forum looking for ideas on a Mexico TR or possible a Grand Prix to fit to my heckflosse/fintail - 1966 230S. I was pleasantly surprised to find a sub-forum for my car here also! Seems like previous mail lists, forums, etc have died out.
I have a Mexico TR I pulled from a junked cars years ago. Has the correct small faceplate and all the fintail mounting hardware for my 1966 230S. This radio has the the Q button to activate the aux input source which I prefer vs. having to manually plug/unplug a cable to switch. But...it doesn't have FM presets. I have the cable w/ the 3.5mm headphone jack from Becker in NJ already and was planning on using a BT adaptor. This is a mono radio.
The radio works - I cleaned it up and tested everything years ago. Reading some posts here by a dormant poster (Aaron) there are recommendations to replace all the capacitors in the amp component. Does anyone by chance have a list of all the capacitors needed and a good place to order? I'm decent with a soldering iron but don't know much about picking capacitors. Guessing Digi-Key best place to buy???
Alternatively - would it be possible to wire a modern amp (which comes with built in BT) to this instead of using the original amp entirely? I have one of these in an old FJ40 and it works great. I mostly stream off the phone anyway but could switch to the BT amp's wired input for AM/FM coming from the Becker. I even have some discrete/hidden speaker enclosures that would work great under the front seats and not use the center dash speaker at all. I wouldn't need the AUX input cable nor BT adaptor at all as the amp would take care of that.
Here's an example of the amp I have in the FJ40 -
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IBI518YSpeakers I have -
https://www.classiccarstereos.com/undercover-i-speakers-pair-120w.htmlIf the elimination of the original amp for a modern amp I could instead use a 1969 Grand Prix I also have. I was able to modify another narrow bezel and faceplate to fit the finny dash. The thumbwheel is the only issue - would have to adjust that before install and tuck behind the dash. All the mounting hardware looks like it would work for the Grand Prix. I don't want to use Grand Prix in it's original/correct form b/c of the requirement to plug/unplug the cable to switch sources between Aux and the radio frequencies. It's stereo instead of mono which is a bonus w/ the speakers under the front seats.
Would need the pin-out of the cable between the amp and the radio and probably pick up a "parts" Becker amp/power-supply to sacrifice for the umbilical cable connection. I wouldn't modify/hack the working radio nor amp at all. Any reason this wouldn't work? Is there a risk of powering the radio via the car 12V bypassing the original amp/power supply? I could add a resistor for the small light bulb....as I'm assuming that is likely a separate wire in the "umbilical" between the radio and amp/power supply.
Thanks -
Dave
