Date:         Mon, 03 Jun 1996 08:42:35 -0500
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         dean c aukes <daukes@mmts.eds.com>
Subject:      VW Radios

Bus Folk,
When I first bought my '73 Camper about 8 years ago, it had a Sears
AM/FM/Stereo cassette player in the dash.  It was hooked up to a single
speaker in the dash and lasted for about three months before the cassette
player stopped working.  Soon there after I was given another player that
didn't fit, and so I decided not to have anything in the bus, and have
enjoyed the silence.  A factory blockoff plate kept the dash looking nice
and I didn't miss a radio except for the rare times on a road trip when I
wanted to know what the weather forecast was.

When I got Opie, the '68 crew cab pickup, he had an AM radio installed which
had the words Volkswagen on the faceplate, probably one of many different
models that came in the various body styles.  I enjoyed having the news on
my (now longer) morning commute and when I noticed an old Sapphire IX in the
junkyard for $20, I couldn't resist - now I have AM and FM in the same radio
unit.  What a wonder of technology!

Well, the real purpose of this post is to find out about VW radios.  Does
anyone have any dealer type information on what radios were available?  Just
in my limited recent experience I've seen five different radios, of which
four were probably dealer installed.  They are:
StarFire XI - a small, AM only unit made by Bowman
Volkswagen - An AM only unit, made for VW by Motorola
Sapphire IX - an AM/FM mono unit I think was made by Becker

And here's a real interesting twist.  I recently bought two Emden III
AM/FM/SW radios.  Unless you look extremely close at the faceplates, they
look identical as installed in the dash.  It turns out that one is made by
Grundig and the other by Blaupunkt.  Behind the dash, there are differences
in size, switches, wiring and circuitry.  They have the same VW part number
with the exception of a letter on the end - B for Blaupunkt, E for Grundig.

My '68 owners manual says nothing about radios.  My '73 owners manual lists
descriptions on four units, all AM/FM/SW mono as follows:
Wolfsburg - two tone buttons, three band selection buttons (KML), no station
selection buttons
Emden - two tone buttons, three band selection buttons (UML)
Hannover - rotary tone slider switch, automatic station seeker button, four
band selection switches (L,M1,M2,U)
Ingolstadt - five combination station button/band selection buttons (L,M,K,U,U)

The band selection is listed as follows - U=VHF (FM), K=Short wave, M=Medium
wave (AM) and L=Long wave.  The faceplate scale on the K goes from about 51
to 48; on the L from about 1.6 to 2.9.  The manual also says that all sets
have a socket for a tape recorder and a connection for an automatic aerial
at the back.

That's about all I know on this at this time.  It appears that there were
lots of different radios offered at the dealer.  Does anyone else have any
information?  There appear to be two adjusting screws on the Blaupunkt Emden
III radio - one in the front and one in the back.  My unit needs a frequency
adjustment - any information before I just "wing it"?   Does anyone know of
a good radio repair shop?

Dean