Making a start on cleaning up my Aiwa NSX-230...

[jonny]

This mid-1990s Aiwa 3-piece has spent the last few years of life being used in my garage, keeping me supplied with music (via a DAB tuner plugged into the aux-in) while I worked on my cars.

It's now filthy and dusty and well overdue a good clean and refurb. It's served me well for about 25 years now so it deserves some attention!

First job was to open up the speakers and clean out the dust and grot from behind the grilles. As you can see, there was a LOT of crap in there! The grilles themselves came off quite easily and were washed in soapy water. The speakers were cleaned with a soft detailing brush and vacuum cleaner first, then the plastic baffle and speaker centre caps wiped clean.

They certainly look a lot better now, although I am considering giving the grilles a fresh coat of paint.

The next job will be to open up and clean out the main unit, clean all the potentiometers as they're quite crackly, check the drive belts and clean the CD player lens so that it works again.

 

[BoomboxLover48]

Good job!

Now that is a happy Aiwa breathing good now!

 

[jonny]

Less success with the main unit.

Opened it up to find it absolutely bogging inside! The reddish grot is dust from when I sprayed a load of panels from my American truck in the garage, the Aiwa on the shelf getting covered in the fallout. Bloody stuff gets everywhere.

On the upside, the cassette drive belts are all fine and the tape decks are both working quite nicely.

Downside is that the CD player is having none of it. The laser powers up and tries to focus, but it never actually "sees" the disc, and so doesn't even attempt to spin up. I suspect that the shite has made its way inside the pickup assembly; disassembling that is likely to completely kill it, so I'm leaving it alone.

Luckily it's not as if I ever use CDs any more. The radio and line ins are far more useful. A good douse of contact cleaner has got all the controls bar the balance slider working well again. And the whole thing looks a great deal better after a good clean.

Only thing left is to find the remote, which I think is in the loft, working up to that as it's an absolute horror show up there!