Repair: RCD310

The radio in my VW Golf MKVI goes crazy sometimes.  It is a North America Delphi RCD-310. There are also European and Asian variants of this radio (perhaps other regions as well). You can tell if you have a North American unit if the four “Hard Keys” are labeled as FM-AM-MEDIA-MENU,  your AM tuner “stops” every 10 Khz,  and the FM tuner stops on  the odd .1,.3,.5,.7,.9 Mhz frequencies.

I also have a MDI (media device interface)  box connected to it as well.  One of the symptoms is “silent” AM radio, meaning you can select a station, but no noise is emitted from the amplifier.  Another symptom is MDI folder navigation and selection behaving strange.  I’ll let you in on a secret.  It’s like every other computer problem – just try rebooting it.  But how can you do that without disconnecting your battery?  Here’s how.  Power on the unit.  Once the unit is on, hold down the power/volume control for about 10 seconds.  At the 10 second mark, the unit will immediately power off and reboot.  It’s non-destructive and will preserve your radio station memory presets.  That’s it!  It should work correctly for quite a while before needing another reboot.