My radio is possessed!!
 

Before anyone else asks, this is on your 1990 300E, right? factory radio?

Gilly

This is the 1990 300E? The intermittent problems could be a failing circuit in the radio, including any number of IC's or other parts. Unless someone has a direct fix for these symptoms, the best bang for the buck might be to get a new radio/CD unit installed or some other upgrades to the system. Good luck.

That radio has a removeable faceplate. Not EASILY removeable, but it does pull off and is available as a seperate part. i am thinking possibly that's what it is. The dealer is supposed to have as a special tool "test" faceplates. If you can get it to them in a failed state, they may want to try plugging in a test faceplate. A new faceplate though I believe may be as much as $200, which would go a long ways towards an aftermarket radio, and then you would also have a CD Player, which I'm sure would appeal to you, so you may want to consider that before having any testing done. I don't think there is a quick, easy fix to it.

Gilly

benzgal,

the "smashed calculator" symptom happens often with my 1989 190e2.6 factory radio as well, in the colder months of the year. Must have something to do with condensation or the cold.

what i do is simply temporarily disconnect the power to the radio. I do this by simply temporarily unseating the radio's fuse from its connector (#13 on my car), by pressing on its connector to temporarily break the circuit. After this, I ensure that the fuse is properly seated back into its normal position. This resets the radio, back to normal operation.

Always has worked for me. Fuse#13 is hard to reach though, in my car.

Tell me if this works for you.

Yes, these radios sound good and work well until they go Schizo as you have experienced. When mine does this sort of thing I have to reboot as Bobby describes, except sometimes, I simply disconnect the battery. When I do, I leave it disconnected for about 30 seconds to ensure that all capacitors have a chance to discharge.

Mine usually exhibits problems upon changing from AM to FM or vice versa.

Hopefully this will help you to nurse it along for awhile. If you have to replace it, you can get some radios that are far superior for much less money from the aftermarket.

BTW, it looks like your holding my cat. Mine is named "Simon."

Good luck,

You can probably get a used replacement on EBAY pretty cheap.

These things are so plagued with problems, I don't think that buying a used one would be a gamble. I believe part of the problem to be firmware related, in other words software bugs.

That said, if you could get one cheap enough, it might be worth the gamble.

My $0.02,