1997 GT Radio volume out of control!

[HelpingAFriend]

Ok, so my friend's grand parents juts got her a 1997 Pontiac Grand Am GT (2 door). The car is noticeably used and roughened up, as the interior looks like it has been ripped apart by a drug search squad and only put back together with half the effort, time and parts. Anyway, so when we got in the car, the radio was kinda loud, and I (by instinct) turned it down, from what i thought. I turned the knob to the left, but it acted as if I was turning it to the right. We both panic and turn the knob every which way to try and get it to go back down but we failed so she turned it off. After we got our hearing back I apologized and she understood and said its happened to her before, its just very touchy and doesn't listen to commands. I was looking around and I seen that she had steering wheel controls on the bottom of the wheel (Awkward place if you ask me) and I told her if she knew about them and she said "No, I didn't even know I had them." So I said, "Maybe they will control the radio." So she turned the radio back on (Blaring of course) and it worked! Steering wheel controls worked!

So, what I want to know is why in the Hell did the radio do that? Is it a bad head unit or what? Just by looking on these forums Pontiac needs some wiring lessons ect. I'm not a Pontiac guy (I love Honda and Acura), neither is she (Also loves Honda and Acura), but for the time being, its her car and she would like it to be fixed as much as possible so the resale value (LOL resale on a Pontiac) would be slightly higher than before so she could score a better chance of getting a used Honda or older Acura.

She has already told me she wants to go aftermarket with the radio system but for time being, I would like to fix the radio for her for now. My other friend has a 98 Grand Prix sedan and her radio controls on her steering wheel just died so i don't want Jess to get stuck with no controls.

Any and all help/ advice will be greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[melsg5]

You have to remove the radio and unless you are familar with electronics, have it repaired at a electronics shop that works on car radios. You are probably better off replacing it.

 

[5speed406]

You can fix it but the parts are hard to find. Our 2000 did the same thing. We had purchased a CD player to replace the factory installed cassette player. After a month the volume acted just like yours. I carefully took apart both radios and swapped the good volume control from the cassette into the CD player. No soldering involved, the control just plugs into the circuit board. Both units had the volume and tune knobs next to each other in the lower left. Not certain all controls will interchange, but these did. My sons 94 Firebird CD player did the same, also had the same style radio. He found a replacement control on eBay.