Solutions to a missing cassette door on a conion c100

When I scored my C-100FF it had the usual traits of missing the tape deck door and the spare cassette drawer. I managed to come up with a workable solution for the spare tape drawer already, documented here.

The deck door was another thing entirely. Earlier on in the piece I wasn't too concerned about the missing door as I'd read some folklore about it being ripped by breakdance crews for quicker tape flipping/changing. I recently discovered this wasn't the case at all and it's more accurate reason is because of the door locking on low battery power and then being ripped off and discarded.

I knew there was a long waiting list of people looking for the original doors, and with the .au dollar being so horrendously poor against the u.s dollar finding/importing one became well out of my finances, so, what to do?

I started looking for some kind of solution as my doorless Conion started annoying me. I discovered JLF and NED209's posts about modding a GF-777 door into a Conion, there seemed to be some excitement about the match and although the photo's on Ned's looked perfect I wasn't sure if it was fully functioning or not. I thought this would be the best option to go for and started hunting around for one. I eventually scored a pair off s2go poster Nikamichi via ebay and started the process of getting it to fit. Oh my lord.. what kind of hell had got myself into?

I really wasn't going to be satisfied with it just sitting on front of the Conion, I wanted it to work 100%.. these aspirations, and my entire lack of knowing what I was really doing, didn't make things easy. From looking at both doors, and I studied both a lot before I did anything, it would initially seem that I just needed to trim the sides a little and hey presto: new deck door!

Let me digress a little here.. have you ever looked at the mechanics involved in how a cassette deck door works? I figured lining up the eject mech catch would be the most important part... uh uh.. not even close. Theres a surprising number of moving parts in this deck door and they all, repeat ALL have to be in 100% alignment with the cassette deck mech and all it's supporting parts.

So the retooling began. First the sides were dremmelled off the 777 door as it's substantially wider. From here the back of the of the door had to be take in as well so that it sat in the shallower deck. The eject catch had to be completely built from scratch as it works entirely differently on the 777. This was super hit and miss and it literally needs to be within a millimeter or two in accuracy otherwise the catch won't allow the door to eject. Too much the otherway and the door won't lock into place.

Thankfully epoxy polymer's and some more dremelling got this part of the door working. This was the least painful part of the whole project.. which gave me false hope that the rest of it would fall into place too... I was quick to lose that theory.

Next up was the spring situation. I had no idea how this was supposed to work, and to be honest I have a really hard time getting my head around the physics of how and why springs are located for the function... I've learned a lot on this project, but I'm still not confident with them. Anyway, I wanted to put in a spring that would eject the door, but I didn't want to screw around with adding anything to the inside of the actual Conion. I always wanted this project to be 100% removable without any changes being made to the deck itself, just in case my wildest dreams come true and I manage to get a genuine replacement. This made the spring installation (especially with my spring-ineptitude) a hard job. I managed to hack a small spring underneath the eject catch that sits up against the back of the deck so that it's not attatched permanently to anything or damage anything (aside from making a small mark where it rests, which I'm not concerned about).

With the spring in place and hand bent to get just enough force and the eject mech working my door began to do it's job. Well, it started to look like it anyway. The gears that keep the door in line on the left hand side were next, again, lots of dremmelling and adjusting finally got the teeth lined up as well as I could get them so it did it's job. Now things were coming together, but just like Tricky says, hell is round the corner...

At this stage I thought I'll get the hinge part of the door sorted. Easy I thought. Theres two little posts, I'll just find some clips or tubing, position them right, some superglue and some accelerator and it'll all be rockin. Alas no. Thats not the case at all. The hinge part of the door is the single most important part of how the door works. All the clearance and tape positioning is due to very, very precise movement of the hinge. Of course, I wasn't prepared to take my Conion apart. She just got repaired and I didn't want to risk ruining any of the work my repairer dude had done even remotely. So I set about working out the hinges from the outside-in, as it were.

The precision involved in how the door works and the complete lack of precision in every method I could come up with the get the door on those little posts started wearing thin after the second week of failed attempts.

I went through absoloutely everything my usually adquately resourceful brain could come up with, all ending with a door that either got stuck, wouldn't hold the tape correctly, or wouldn't hold up to being used more than once. I scuplted hook and catches, cut up metal tubing, Lego pieces, other door hinges of anything that seemed remotely viable. All ended in tears and copious swearing.

Well, today I got it going. Nearly 3 weeks after I started working on her, the door WORKS. The hinge problem was solved with some coaxial cable shielding that is cut and glued to the door but given just enough travel for the door to pivot, while still locking in place. The cassette head mech now lines up perfectly with cassette and it's little holder it sits in in the actual door and it ejects when the button is pushed. It still requires a little help opening all the way, but I can deal with that, and I figure it will loosen up to the required amount with use.

The door does stick out a couple of millimeters from the face of the radio, but it's not something I'm going to worry about. I'm sure there were probably easier ways of doing it, but I usually just nut through the problems I often make, but I got the result I was after, so I'm pretty satisfied with her.

Thanks for reading through my experience, onto the show!

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sean 91 said:

Are 777 doors easy enough to come by? I might have a go at making one out of perspex like dave bush did. Ive contacted him already regarding the vinyl but no luck yet. Im also interested which lego pieces are used to create the hinges... Any ideas guys?

@gluecifer: what did you use in replacement of your missing cassette drawer? Im sure i could fabricate something to fill the space quite easily if all else fails

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JVC Floyd said:

Man I would just make a hinged flap that covers the cassette door with velcro at the top. Just make it out of a cassette door that looks good on it.

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Lasonic TRC-920 said:

Man I would just make a hinged flap that covers the cassette door with velcro at the top. Just make it out of a cassette door that looks good on it.

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No, you would hack the whole front out of the radio and replace it with a JVC compo

Great thread, I remember this....the early days of full fabrication!

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