Anyone ever hear of an AM modulator or maybe some other way to play an ipod thru an AM radio.
I wanted to do what you want to do. Here is what I did.
First I bought an AM transmitter and hooked it up to my player to see if I could play it through the AM radio. I was sadly disappointed because the antennae on the outside of the car would not clearly pick up the AM signal from the transmitter anywhere inside the car, probably because of the metal car body blocking the signal. I would get some signal of different strengths depending on the position of the transmitter and its antennae but it was always staticy. Since I couldn't play through the AM radio I decided I would at least play through the AM speaker. That could be done several different ways. One way would be to convert the whole car to 12 volt and install a modern player of some type. I didn't want to convert the car to 12 volt since I'm keeping it totally stock. I could buy a 6 to 12 volt converter to run such a player but didn't want to install such player nor have it just loose in the car somewhere. So, here's what I did to get anything I wanted to play through the old AM radio speaker, including the AM radio, without changing or converting voltage nor installing any modern player.
I first tried just plugging the speaker into the player's headphone jack. A little sound came out of the speaker but not enough. So, I bought the most powerful portable small headphone amp that ran on its own internal 9 volt battery. I plugged it into the player headphone jack and plugged the speaker wire into the amp output. It worked great and was plenty loud and sounded great. I then installed a micro double throw double terminal switch in the top of my glove box that can't be seen except from the floor and connected the speaker wires to the center common terminal of the switch and the radio wires to one side and the wire from the headphone amp output to the other side. Then I could switch my speaker between the two sources. Then I put it all in the glove box, hooked up my player, and it worked great. Except for one thing. The small 9 volt standard size battery in the headphone amp only played the speaker for about an hour before going dead. So, I built a 9 volt battery pack out of 6 D batteries in a holder from Radio Shack and run the amp off of that. That battery pack lasts a year or two. Because the signal from the player and amp are stereo but the one old AM speaker is not, I plug a combining adapter into the amp output to combine the two signals and the monaral wire from the speaker switch into that. That way I get all of the power of both sides of the amp as well as the sound of both tracks of music all coming out of the speaker.
Now I can play anything I want through the AM radio speaker including the AM radio itself (we have a couple of great Oldies AM stations in our area). And, if I want to remove all trace of the sound system I just pull it out of the glove box, unplug it from the wire to the switch, and push that wire through the hole in the glove box.
At car shows I play Glen Miller and other 40's music all day through the AM radio speaker to add "atmosphere" that everyone enjoys. Some warn me that running the radio all day is going to kill my battery and are shocked when I tell them it's not running off the battery.
I'm away from home for the weekend so can't add photos and diagrams of my setup nor links to the transmitter and amp if you want to try this. When I get home Monday I'll add the photos and links.
