I know, I know but I like the look of factory stereos in older cars 
Anyone know where I can send my e30 stereo for repair? Everything works fine except the tape player. I picked some new tapes on Ebay and everytime I put one in nothing happens and it gets stuck.
The stereo on my car is quite rare and I have the manual and the code cards, otherwise I would just buy one from another e30.
Wich model stereo do you have. There seem to be quite a few but this guy has a tutorial on the dissasembly of one and its repair
https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?2146742-How-to-Repair-BMW-Radio
This is the one in my car, it’s an ‘87 325is.
I tried taking it apart but did not see any evident problems with the loading mechanism.
That tutorial probably covers it but the pictures are all held hostage by Photoevil.
I was wondering the same thing about my factory tape deck in the Heep. Everything works but the deck. Throw a tape in and it autoreverses several times and spits it out. I feel like it just needs cleaned and reoiled or something.
Someone on the Jeep forums mentioned a company that repairs them, but it was $400. Didn't pursue that. I'd kind of like to keep it since I found a great bluetooth adapter that gives me handsfree calling and music off my phone for $16. The Jeep decks come up cheap on the trade forums sometimes, so I'll probably just risk the $20 on one that is supposed to work correctly.
A lot of home decks have rubber belts that dry out and slip and cause similar symptoms. Is it possible there’s a hardened or broken rubber belt in there you could replace? The two capistans (bits that go into the tape spool holes) are tied together somehow and if that slips or only one spins it will cause tapes to get stuck and get eaten.
Belts and pinch rollers are good places to start, if they're available. 30 year old rubber probably isn't very rubbery. The belt is probably egged (egg shaped) and along with the pinch roller is probably dryer the the atacama desert. If you have no luck on finding consumables, you could try one of the rubber regrip products that are available.
Thanks for this thread! Still use the factory cassette player almost every day in my '91 Caravan.
Places like this can help you.
In high school I had a cutlass with the factory tape deck. This was during the age of cd's so i went a long time without using it. Then one day while cleaning out my closet i found a real treasure, Beastie Boys, License to ill on casette. So I popped it in the car and rocked that E36 M3 for a couple days. After I had my fill of that I went to eject the tape and found out eject didn't work. On gm radios the only way to stop the tape was to eject it. So I couldn't even change back to fm. I tried everything I could think of to no avail. So I figured I might as well update to a CD player. The only problem was I worked for minimum wage part time since I was in school. It took several months to save up for that radio. I must have listened to "Paul Revere" and "Brass Monkey" 6000 times. It wasn't nearly as enjoyable at the end.
"I drive a one-eyed Malibu, without a muffler - and a tape deck that plays if you kick it hard enough..."
I'm shocked there has been no mention of Creedence tapes in this thread
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