I have a 1995 Chevy truck. The Delco (factory) radio works fine, but the tape player was dead when I bought the used truck. I would not use the tape player anyhow, so that did not matter.
The problem is that a former owner of this truck, must have attempted tp repair or remove a stuck, and used some tool, which mangled the tape player innards.
Because of this, everytime I turn on the radio, it would begin by grinding, clunking, and making all sorts of irritating sounds, BEFORE the radio would start. These sounds were the tape player's motor, relay, or whatever was attempting to play a tape, even without a tape on it.
Since I had to take the dashboard apart to do some repairs, I had easy access to the radio. I removed it, and intended to cut the wires to the motor and any relays. When I opened it, I found all the metal (where a tape would be inserted), all bent up and destroyed.
Rather than cut individual wires, I found the tape portion, including two circuit boards, all being fed by one large plug, which was plugged into the other half of the radio.
I just removed that plug completely, thinking that would make the entire radio unusable. But after reconnecting the power and speaker plugs, the radio works fine, and those annoying tape player sounds are gone.
I'm posting this to ask if there is any reason I could damage the radio by leaving those other boards unplugged? If not, I'm good to go, because I now have a working radio, and the useless tape player is completely disconnected.
Thanks