Next project, turning two Aiwa J9's into one good one. The photos are from the sellers' ads. Obviously the blue one is thoroughly corroded. I don't expect the motor, main board, or motor board to be usable. Even the mechanism would require more cleaning than it's worth. I hope the equalizer is ok because I need one for another unit. The silver one has various bits missing. The missing radio dial knob is irreplaceable. Its insides look clean, but it will require the usual repairs. I hope to use the blue case parts as they are one of the rarest colors and luckily it has the blue battery lid. Fixing the metallic blue paint on the cassette lid will be the most difficult task. I may swap the blue panels with a black J9, since the silver ones are more desirable than black. Missing, irreplaceable dial part Nice clean main board. And the blue one. Corrosion at the farthest areas from the battery compartment and on the motor mounts are very bad signs.
Good luck with this - more than luck required but a little always helps. And I just remembered a box with 4 HSJ202 machines collected years ago in the hope of resurrecting one good example. With battery gondola. Now where's that to-do list...
Both J9's have arrived. The silver one from China took 10 weeks for delivery. Its Goofish purchase and delivery to Superbuy went fine. Air delivery halted when an inspector claimed it could not go by air because it contained batteries. I objected, showing a photo from the seller with the rear case panel removed and an empty battery compartment. To no avail, so it had to go back to Superbuy, back to export inspection, and finally delivery by sea. At least it eventually arrived rather than disappearing. It arrived with an empty battery compartment. Plus there is damage to the radio panel which was not there in the ad photos. It has non-original equalizer panel, radio dial, tape direction windows and motor board. To my great surprise the radio and tape player work. Also ffwd and frwd. Auto reverse does not work, but that's typical for these and I know how to fix it. The irreplaceable equalizer only partly works and I don't know if it can be fixed. The translated Goofish ads do not provide much about working condition, so I don't know whether it was claimed to be working. Obviously someone has worked on it. Out of the 18 other (all lower condition quality) Aiwas I've bought, not a single one has arrived with a working tape drive. All have had fair descriptions from the sellers. The blue J9 from Buyee in Japan isn't such a good story. So far I can't even get the power led to light up. Without that, I can't fully determine what doesn't work. There is corrosion almost everywhere in it. So far everything I check on it is bad. A contact on the leaf switch for Play has corroded away. The motor was seized. Part of the mechanism was seized. A take-up reel was seized. The tuner was seized. An idler pulley was seized. A flat capacitor has fallen apart. Several adjustable resistors are corroded. The gear inside gear assembly A is cracked. The erase head return springs have broken free. There is a list of about 20 problems before even powering it up. So except for maybe the equalizer, I know I can get one fully working blue J9 from these two. Or swap in an equalizer from a less valuable black one. In total, in US dollars and including shipping, these two J9's have cost around $200. A functioning blue J9 is worth several times that. I just wish I could buy good J9 main boards and equalizers. I'll post more as work progresses in these. Edit: Hours later, I've opened up the silver J9. Discovered the replacement motor board is missing the speed adjustment potentiometers. It still runs the tape because they used jumper wires to bypass the missing pots. I've never thought of doing this. And despite this, the default tape speed sounds fine. Why would someone do that when you can buy the pots or the motor board? Anyway, I have a spare new motor board so it will be installed. I took the equalizer apart, cleaned it and found all 5 slide knobs were broken or corroded. Luckily I have spares that I had repaired earlier. Installed them and the equalizer works fine! Now I know this J9 can be refurbished to a high standard, so it will get the blue panels.
