How to modify your radio to be an MP3 player!

[evan_flatt69]

you know the funny part? i dotn even have a ipod or mp3 player to hook to it when i do the mod. but what i do liek about hte thread is you show where to hook up the wires to run the jacks for doing it. so that means i could now hook up muiltiple jacks including rca jacks and so forth to plug in what ever i want to plug into it. even a 8 track player. ha ha.

I guess you could! If you wanted to you could even rig up a CD player in the glovebox!

[Bummer72]

Cool mod!
I just tried this with my old am/fm, and it worked! Unfortunately, it sounds like the amp is shot in the old unit, but it was fun messing around with it!
I'm also thinking of doing the DIN mod; it feel like sacrilege to bend the ears back on the dash to fit in a DIN adapter...I'm going to have a hard time doing that....
Option #3: Put in a mini amp with a 1/8" jack, hidden up under the dash for my smartphone...then I can stream tons of music, news, etc!!!
Oh, the insanity!!!
Thanks!

[couchcuts]

I just wanted to say thanks for this thread.

What a great addition to the old radio ....it works great!

After I collected all of the items, I Followed your instructions and the whole thing took about an hour.

I can stream sports, music news all from my iPhone.......

http://youtu.be/1BEieZBoKmM



very cool.

[evan_flatt69]

Thanks for the replies and complements on the tutorial guys. Awesome work! I'm glad some people could get some uses out of this. It's a really nice feature for your bump.

[Calfdemon]

Just pulled my friend's 67 radio out of his truck and I will be doing the mod for him this week. Ill post the results, but I am sure it will work just as advertised.

[elmo34]

Hello. This is one of the coolest mods yet. Not being an electrical expert, I am unsure as to how to solder my connections. I have attached a pic of the circut board from my radio. Could someone let me know where the solder joints should be? Also, I have attached a pic of the Belken connector I picked up. As there is no yellow wire, I assume the connections would be red = red, white = yellow, and bare copper = negative connections. Correct? Thanks in advance for any and all help!

[Calfdemon]

Just pulled my friend's 67 radio out of his truck and I will be doing the mod for him this week. Ill post the results, but I am sure it will work just as advertised.

I wish I had taken pictures as I went along, but I will add them later when I dive back into the radio (whenever that is). I went ahead and tried to do this mod to the 67 radio. Since the 67 radio is a 1 year only part, of course, it did not work out the same way as it is documented here. First, the circut board attached to the volume knob is not accessable at all. Only 1 side of the 67 radio comes off, and it is not the side that would expose the circut board. So what I had to do was de-attach the volume knob completely so I was able to spin it around inside the radio, so I could then have the circut board facing up. Once I did this, I soldered the 3 wires to the same 3 locations on the board in hopes that it would be the same.

I was able to spin the entire volume assembly back around so it was back in its proper position and then put everything back together. I installed the radio and turned it on. Now, I have nothing... No sound, no volume, no annoying AM radio hiss and crack when trying to find stations. It really is no loss because the AM radio was not being used anyway, but the mod did not work on the 67 radio. One of these days when I have access to the truck and extra time, I will pull the radio back out and dive into it to see if there is another way to do it. But in the meantime, I think we are going to wire in an amplifier under the seat and direct wire it to the speakers. And run an MP3 hookup directly to the line-in location on the amp. This way we will just bypass the radio completely.

The one beneficial thing to diving into the 67 radio was that I found where the internal light bulb was and replaced it. So at least now, when you turn the power on the radio, the light comes on!

When I re-address the radio at a later date, I will take some pictures to show the differences.

[couchcuts]

It looks like you got the Belkin cord separated correctly.

What year and make of radio are we looking at in the picture above.

I took apart a '68 FoMoCo radio to do my modification.

Are there a few more connections on the board that are not in the photo, mine were on the side closest to the volume knob.

[evan_flatt69]

Hello. This is one of the coolest mods yet. Not being an electrical expert, I am unsure as to how to solder my connections. I have attached a pic of the circut board from my radio. Could someone let me know where the solder joints should be? Also, I have attached a pic of the Belken connector I picked up. As there is no yellow wire, I assume the connections would be red = red, white = yellow, and bare copper = negative connections. Correct? Thanks in advance for any and all help!

Yes you are correct about the colors of the cord. But I am unsure of your solder points. Can you post a pic of the board out of the radio? It looks like part of it is blocked from view in the picture. Also, is it a 1967 radio?

[elmo34]

My radio is out of a 1971. I did have to undo the entire chassis from the frame in order to get at the entire circut board. A few more sheet metal screws than the instructions show, but doable. Couch and evan, here is a pic of the entire board.

[evan_flatt69]

I've posted a pic of what I'm 99% sure should be correct.

[couchcuts]

Looks correct to me

[elmo34]

evan_flatt69 and couchcuts - Worked like a charm! Thanks for the help. How great is it now that I can ride down the road in my truck listening to Zac Brown playing Chicken Fried!

[Calfdemon]

Grrrr... I am going to re-attack this 67 radio (with photos) again as soon as I can. Its not even my truck, but I want this to work!

[evan_flatt69]

evan_flatt69 and couchcuts - Worked like a charm! Thanks for the help. How great is it now that I can ride down the road in my truck listening to Zac Brown playing Chicken Fried!

No problem elmo. Glad I could help.