I'm going to get dirty this weekend helping my dad refurbish his becker mexico deck. He has had his car since 1980 and has amassed 580,000km's on the original engine(it's missed a few km's since the odometer started working intermittantly). Anyway, we looked at some new stereos today and I almost convinced him to make the upgrade but after 26 years he likes his OEM. The orange tuner band was stuck but we got to the bottom of that today and will be an easy fix. I fear the other issues will be more complex. Any of you out there with any experience on these things, your help will make the end of the weekend slightly relaxing.

Issues at hand:

1) During the seek on the tuner, the orange band gets to the end of the dial and stays there. When working properly, it would return to the beginning and start searching again.

2)Tape deck will play for a second then spit the tape back out.

3)No sound from right side speakers.(hopefully just wiring)

4)Burned out light on display. (I am hoping that these lights are still available at an auto parts store but 26 years is a long time).

This seems like a big project and my dad thinks I know something about it as I rewired a new sony cd player into my 87 560sel. That seemed easy. As well, I read that the 450 does not have a direct line to the battery therefore making a new deck not as appealing as the stations will have to be reset each time the car has been turned off. Is this true?

Any ideas?

the little lebowski.