Factory Radio restoration and Modification by Nick

I'm just putting this out here.  My friends here at the Bullnose are going to be the first to know.  We are going to be starting an internet based business restoring and or modifying factory radios..    Nick has been an electronic engineer and designer for many many years.    Brutus came with premium sound digital AM/FM cassette with 6x9's in the doors.   Nick modified the radio for bluetooth for both audio and phone calls.  This is not a cheap module hanging on the radio, but rather a AM/FM/Cassette/Bluetooth with Dolby :-)    For our 79.5 Ranchero.  He took a period radio, completely gutted it with the exception of the tuning circuitry.  (believe it or not, the old analog ford radios although they sound very bad, the tuning section is one of the finest tuners that were ever built, and compete with the Marantz 10B tuner ( the finest tuner ever built )  The radio was turned into a head unit.  Our goal for this project was simply this.  We grew up in the days of the audiophile era of the 1970's and nothing sounded quite like the vintage electronics of this time period.  I'm talking home stuff.  The ranchero radio contains a modified pre-amplifier removed from a high end vintage stereo receiver.  the amplifier is a highly modified Sansui design.    In edition, he has developed a device that will totally eliminate alternator whine if you install an amp on your factory radio.  right now it is called " stop whining damnit"  :-)    In edition to bluetooth mod's, he is going to totally restore some radio's to factory brand new.    I hear alot of complaints about the vintage look radios which quite honestly, are rather cheap and don't sound very good.  Many of us, me included want  the factory radio.   Just putting this out here to see if anybody may be interested.

I'm interested.  But I'm in no rush as it is for Dad's truck and I'm years away on that.  I've been planning to use something like the Classic Car Stereo's USA-740, although I've not settled on what I'll use.  But basically the features I'd want are:

AM/FM stereo

Bluetooth for audio and phone calls

Mike jack for phone calls so the phone can be in my pocket

Reasonable power for speakers, but I could go with an outboard amp

Sub output

Preferably no clock as I'll have the factory clock just above it.

No need for cassette

No need for CD or CD controls

I believe I have the original AM/FM stereo radio, but memory says something doesn't work on it, and I think it is the FM section.  Is that something that could be used to provide those features?

I had this done to a factory am/fm only radio (that no longer worked and couldn't be repaired) for my '81:

http://www.tech-retro.com/Aurora_Design/Home.html

Installed by: http://www.woodradios.com/

Not cheap but very worth it if you want your original radio with modern sound. It can also be done to an am only radio and you get fm and bluetooth etc. The sound is really good but you have to upgrade your speakers which in my case push the door panel out a bit. This could probably be remedied by spending a bit more tie getting the mounting better. Everything works as original including the preset buttons, the balance slider, tone, everything. Because the am/fm (and cassette decks) already has a LED in the display there is no difference at all in the looks, the only change is the LED changes color depending on which setting you have it on. If you have am only they would add a small led to the face for this purpose.

Actually a speaker upgrade is not necessary.  factory speakers do not sound as bad as you think they do.  it's the radio's

The speaker upgrade was partly because the ones I had were not factory door speakers but some junkyard aftermarket ones and partly because Wood Radios strongly recommended it. I'm a bit ignorant of speaker ratings etc but they suggested 2 models and I think it was based on the ohm ratings to get "best performance". Regardless, the sound quality is really good and its nice to have bluetooth.

Ive personally been looking for someone to service and fix my old radio, I know the band for the cassette is busted, tapes play only for a couple seconds then auto stop and eject with the tape bunched up.  The other problem I have is there is a small point on the volume pot around 50% volume where you turn it a from I guess 50% to 55% and there is no volume change but then you start hitting around 60% volume then it starts going up again from there.  Figure its the pot itself.  Then there is the push buttons they used to work but since I dont use them they dont work anymore.

Aside from that I thought of upgrading the radio to try and get it to sound better.  I just dont like how it sounds with the lack of bass even though its a stereo.

I found one guy out in Arizona but his turn around is 8 months to 11 months and I dont know if I trust shipping my radio out and waiting almost a year to get it back.

I would love to keep my factory '83 cassette radio.  The local outfit that converts old radios to new technology like you speak of won't touch mine because it has a cassette and they don't know how to work on those.

thats the problem I am running into, everyone that messes with old radios like for my '56 they wont touch my '82 cause its a cassette.  I found a guy out in Arizona or Nevada I cant remember now but he does 8-tracks but he told me hes been doing it for so long hes willing to take a crack and getting mine functional again.  I told him it plays it just auto stops cause the band is broken.  But my thing is I dont want to be a year without a radio let alone take a risk like that where he could possibly pass away and now I am royally screwed by not having a radio now.

Why Ive been really thinking about making my own repairs to the push buttons and then do a ready-rad or find some kind of inline bluetooth thing so I can just link my phone to the radio to play my music since I doubt I can get the cassette to work myself.  I did get a link to a bunch of bands but dont know what size and there are quite literally thousands based off square cut, round, angle cut, the thickness of the band the depth of the band the length, ect.

The inline bluetooth things do work, but they don't work all that well.  We've tried many of them thats why he came up with putting the module inside the radio.    We can rebuild cassette decks as well.   For the radio in our truck.  what we did.  The truck came with premium sound radio.  as you  know with the trucks, there is only 2 speakers.  we bought the exact same premium sound radio but from a lincoln which has the fader.  the fader was removed and the microphone was placed where the fader is supposed to go, so you cant tell

the cassette can be rebuilt.  the one good thing right now about the 80's radio's, they aren't going for ridiculous prices yet and if any parts are needed, they are usually found easily.  

I thought about getting a radio like that but not sure how hard it is to find that bezel for that style of radio.

I do have the two door speakers and the sound isnt horrible just there isnt much bass.

I know on other vehicles I have put in the mono dash location a single sub speaker in dash size to obtain a little bit more bass but I cant do that on my truck as I put a NOS dash speaker in and wired it in with a resistor to be an external speaker for my CB radio.  Makes hearing the CB so much easier having a speaker up high than one facing the floor.

Thats why I havent done the blue tooth thing, I think I will just do the redi-rad that plugs inline with the antenna and has a headphone jack that comes out.  Could just pull the rubber floor mat back and run that cord under the mat and have it come up between the seat at least it would look nicer than going across the floor from under the dash.  Or if I could get a adapter to convert from male to female I could some how install it into the metal plug for my cigarette lighter delete that my truck has but still would have to have a wire going across the floor to the seat.

It can be done,  the bezel is gettable, you can get a radio from a Lincoln of that eaa, but the problem is the radio bracket, you have to find that from a truck or bronco that came with that radio.  The wire harness is deifferent as well as it has an extra hot line for the radio memory, but you can optain harness adaptors

After seeing this post I reached out to Nick and George to get assistance with my factory 83 AM/FM cassette.  When I got my truck it still had the factory speakers and the head unit was very touch and go as far as it working correctly.  The more I used it the better it got, but it still cut out frequently, was full of static and the stereo light didn't come on.  The tape player spit out tapes and eventually swallowed my tape adapter which plugs into my phone.  My radio preset buttons did seemingly nothing either.

These guys came to my rescue.  They fully serviced everything and returned a unit to me that looked new, was factory original and was fully functional.  Stereo light works, tuner works, tape deck cleaned, aligned, demagnitized - works, push button presets work, everything detailed nicely.  I elected to keep my unit stock, and these guys did it with excellence.  Other professional shops told me they could not help me since my unit had a cassette player.  I heard this from more than one place.  Nick had zero problem with this.

I have also updated my speakers with new ones and I can say that I'm very happy with my factory stereo system.  It sounds great, looks great and I can't recommend these guys enough.  If you are on the fence give them a shot.  These factory radios look so much better in our trucks than a modern head unit and you won't have to hack up the center trim bezel either!  Thanks George and Nick!

In case anybody is curious I installed THESE SPEAKERS.  They came with a harness (Crutchfield includes this) so I could still use my original factory wiring without cutting/splicing anything (:  No drilling required on my original doors as the holes line up and the speakers hide pretty well behind the door panel grilles.  

Thank you so much Troy.  I am very glad you are happy with your radio.  It's a true timecapsule piece as are our trucks.  Thank you for the kind words.  Sometimes Kind words are worth more then money.  Nick has done TV and electronics repair for many many years and would pride himself in the work he does.  When people would get there TV back, they would call him and tell him that it had a better picture then when it was new.  Thats because once he got the set working, he did the little extra's like set the colors etc.  Fastforward to today, it's just not like that anymore, there is no pride in electronics anymore.  All TV's have good pictures and to be honest, they are all junk.  The whole back of the shop is filled with TV's with busted screens which 9 out of 10 that came in would have, and if the screen wasn't the problem, finding parts was.  It has gotten so bad that TV's with the same model numbers have different parts.  Needless to say, He stopped repairing TV's and wants to do something he can take pride in

Nick takes great pride in what he does.  When Brutus was new, he made it remote start, window up and down and lock and unlock before it was even offered on vehicles.  
In re-doing Brutus, he made all of the wireharness himself along with the TTL and relay logic mods to the electrical system.

To make a long story short.  China and Korea took his pride away .  Your kind words are definatly going to put a smile on his face, and that is worth more to me then any form of monitary payment, and for that I thank you very much

That's a really good review! I'm impressed.

George - You've said before what Nick has done to the factory radios, but what can he do? In other words, can he add Bluetooth so a 1981 AM/FM radio could have hands-free? What about a USB input? Sub-out? How much power?

I've planned to buy something like the Classic Car Stereos USA-630 and a self-powered sub when the time comes, but I'm a long way from being ready to do that. However, I'd like to send the business your way instead of buying from someone else if that is what Nick wants to do.

So maybe we can kick it around here and then discuss pricing via email?

Gary.  Good idea about kicking it around in here, in the end it is going to help us as well.  I'm just going to start out with some random things.  I have to have some discussions with Nick as far as to what will work with what  and if some stuff can even be done.

Lets start here.  The radio you speak of, the USA630.  It's a pretty sweet deal for the price.  I really like what they are doing as far as making radio's with all the modern features that will fit right into the dash opening and they have a fairly decent sound.   To me and alot of other people, while they are cool, it still looks aftermarket.  We don't like aftermarket radio's for this reason, they just don't look right and look out of place, and is the main reason we ended up doing many mods to the radio in the ranchero.   With the ranchero, the main reason is it has to keep the factory look, our Ranchero is very very rare.  It's a 1979 1/2 commerative edition.  Only 700 were made, and as of last check, less then 350 titles remain so no matter what is done to it, it has to be able to be reversed.  So in the end, our goal here is to keep the factory radio chassis and take it in whatever direction any particular customer would want.

There is no way we would be able to compete with the price tag of the USA630.  The largest part of the price tag would be the donor radio itself depending on what it is, ie, just a stereo radio, or a radio with either cassette or 8 track.  So lets start here.  The radio's we are speaking of, the analog ones with the knobs on either side  of the factplate.  The radios remained the same since the late 60's, the only changes that were made were to the faceplates and the connectors all of which interchange.  This is a little known fact and enabled us to get a radio for the ranchero to mod without breaking the bank.  The ranchero has a cassette deck and cassette decks in the 70's are very rare and worth quite a bit of money especially in working condition.  We bought a radio like Troy has above, we were able to get it fairly cheap because it's an 80's radio.  We also had a junk 70's cassette radio that had a good faceplate so we were in business.




The first pic is the radio in the ranchero, the next one is troy's radio.  See the difference?  

I have to have a discussion with Nick as far as what can be done to these radio's to have them all self contained and if it can be done.   The system in the ranchero has a seperate amplifier and would be on the extreme upper end of what can be done.  

Some of you may already know by reading Jim's post on " cab upgrades" that both Nick and I are fairly hardcore audiophiles, me being worse then him, so the Ranchero's system is a no holds barred, audiophile system.  The radio which has been turned into a tuner/preamp still utilizes Fords Tuner section, believe it or not, the tuner in these radios are among the finest you will ever encounter.  They are of very old design known as superheterodyne, they can pull in stations like no other and the stereo seperation of a superheterodyne is second to none.  Everything else was gutted out.  The goal for the system in the ranchero was the wonderful big powerful receivers we had back in the 70's.  We wanted sound like we had in the house so Nick got to work.  The radio, which is now just a head unit ( Tuner/Preamp ) has a precision preamplifier, a precision tone control amplifier ( bass and trebble ) a correct loudness contour, a highly regulated power supply along with hands free bluetooth for phone calls and aux input for wire connection.  This feeds the amplifier.  Class AB at 155 watts per channel of pure strong stable power driving a 3 way speaker system with all passive crossover components.  The speaker system was designed by me ( George ) and has 10 inch woofers ( Not Subwoofers ) and midrange and tweeters in the door.
Again, this is extreme and would end up costing a few thousand.    I know you probably would not want anything like this, but i just want to show what can be done.  

Again, i'm going to have a discussion with Nick about what can be done to these particular radios as far as making them into an all in 1 unit

i'm stopping this reply here, i notice if i ramble to long and include pics, it wont post.  And to try and keep things neat and organized

George - I'm not hung up on the price of the USA630, and was just using it as an example of what I was considering.

And, as an aside, I understand the "superhet" terminology quite well.  Was once a ham radio operator and passed the test about a 5-tube superhet receiver with ease.  So retaining the original receiver is great for me.

But you are right that I probably don't want to go "whole hog" on the speaker system.  I once had a Miata with Boston Acoustics 3-way speakers in the doors which used 6 1/2"s as the woofers, and they would move your pants legs on certain bass notes.  But for Dad's truck I'll probably be happy with a 2-way system and a self-powered subwoofer under the console.

So, what I think I'd like is radio, meaning head unit with an internal amp, with sub-outs and Bluetooth for both streaming and hands-free.  However I can see that the next logical step up would be a similar system but with an external amp.  And in reality adding that amp isn't that big of a deal, so if that's what you and Nick come up with I'd be interested.

Nick and I are discussing that right now.  In the meantime, we need donor radio's    Just AM-FM with no tape.  we need some donor radio's in order to prototype , they need not work. if anybody knows of any, please let me know.

Gary  Its a beautiful day and we are finishing up the touch up painting on Brutus, finally, and hopefully it will be done.  
Ill be back on a bit later and give you some more details.  Nick and I are discussing ways in which to modify the radio to do everything the classic car radio does and have it plug n play.

Im pretty sure I have the original 1981 AM/FM radio from Dad’s truck.  But if I remember correctly the FM doesn’t work. I could ship it to you if that would help, but without FM maybe not?

However, if it could be repaired you could see how you could improve it to modern standards to go back in Dad’s truck?