Progress on my era radio project

[dan]

For anyone interested in following along

I've attached the radio head to the steering column to make sure that it's going to fit and be workable. It turned out that I had to mount it a little further down the column than I'd planned, but it worked out fine because it give better access to the controls.



Here's a close up.



The key switch on the front will turn the "radio" on and off. I found a remote control for my MP3 player that will allow me to control track/volume using push buttons, which I've mounted to the back of the radio head. The next step is to fab brackets for the speaker and amp that are going in the radio cabinet and then I'll be ready to hook everything up and test it out.

 

[1930artdeco]

Sir....may we have some more pics please....? And info as to how you do this so that if I decide to do this I have a starting point.

Mike

 

[dan]

I can post some more pictures when I get home tonight.

The trickiest part is finding an era radio. The one I have is a 1934 GE B-40, which I got off fleabay. It was in pretty rough shape, but I've almost got it into usable condition now. Radios with remote heads that mount to the steering column aren't exactly rare, but they list at ridiculous prices if they're in good shape (and sometimes even when they're not: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170651633609 )

Since I don't want hip-hop playing in my Coupe, I did some research and found an interface that works with iPods (and iPhones) that allows you to control the device using remote-mounted buttons (http://www.aniomagic.com/remote/). The seller intends the remote to be used in textiles, but hardware buttons and resistors work just fine. A single press of either button does play/pause, a double press does track forward/back, and holding a button does volume up/down.

I have a 6" speaker, amplifier, and a 6v to 12v inverter that I'm mounting in the radio housing. Correctly wired, I'll be able to plug my iPod in and get music out of the "radio"--and control the music using two miniature buttons hidden on the back of the radio head.

I'm only about 1/2 way there with the project, but I'll post updates and photos here as I go along... If you want all the gory details, you can PM me.

 

[Model A Man]

I have a reg car radio/cd player with aux outlet(my A is 12V) that I play my Ipod on. I was hoping to find another way to play my Ipod. my ? is, what kind of amp would I need to get to just use my Ipod and make it possible to hide the amp under the seat and do away with the car radio/cd player thanks. My A coupe has 4 speakers, 2 in the kick panels and 2 on the shelf behind the seat that are old drive in speakers with new speakers inside. thanks for any info and ideas

 

[CarlG]

I have a reg car radio/cd player with aux outlet(my A is 12V) that I play my Ipod on. I was hoping to find another way to play my Ipod. my ? is, what kind of amp would I need to get to just use my Ipod and make it possible to hide the amp under the seat and do away with the car radio/cd player thanks. My A coupe has 4 speakers, 2 in the kick panels and 2 on the shelf behind the seat that are old drive in speakers with new speakers inside. thanks for any info and ideas

Check out this string for some ideas. This is in a '39, but the same ideas / techniques would apply.
http://www.jalopyjournal.com/?p=11082

 

[Model A Man]

thanks CarlG for the info I printed it out. it gives me a starting point. thanks again

 

[dan]

Update:

Here's the front, cleaned up. I repainted it with satin black which is a pretty close match for the original (though it's rattle can and not baked on).

Another picture with the speaker (a new 6" speaker) installed behind the grill and the rotary switch mounted.

Here's the amp, a tiny 160 watt deal, next to a quarter for scale.

Amp mounted.

Speaker from the inside. The rotary switch below the speaker will be non-functional, but was needed to hold the dial that was originally mounted on the radio. One tricky aspect of all this is that I'm trying not to mangle the radio in the modification process, in case some day I (or a future owner) want to put it back to it's original configuration. That means no new holes (so some mounting was done with double-sided body panel tape) and trying to minimize other changes.

This is the circuitry for the iPhone remote. Yep--that's all there is to it: a tiny chip mounted to an iPhone dock connector. Resistance and number/length of button presses determines what the chip should tell the iPhone to do: play/stop/ff/rw/vol up/vol down

Next steps are to wire all the components together and test it, then solder and shrink wrap the connections and tidy everything up.

It's pretty amazing seeing the quality and workmanship of this radio.

The entire metal case has a "texture" pressed into it (sort of a simulated leather look) that you can sort of see in the first picture. The back is made out of two spot-welded pieces and the welds are clean and precisely centered on the joint. The almost-80-year-old stickers are faded, but still legible and firmly attached.

It's easy to forget in our modern, no-Chinese-word-for-quality world what a good product was like, and how many of them were made in the past.

 

[dan]

Final update

At this point, I'm pretty much done except for some installation clean-up. Here are two pictures of the system installed in the car:



The two black wires you see coming out of the radio allow the system to be plugged into my iPhone. One plugs into the "docking" port on the bottom of the phone and allows me to control the volume and move forward and back through the songs. The other plugs into the headphone jack and puts the phone's audio output through a mini amplifier before playing it through the speaker.

The "head unit" mounted on the steering wheel column is original to the GE B-40 radio. I have added two micro switches to the back that control the iPhone functions mentioned above. The key switch in the head unit controls power to the amplifier.

There are just a couple of minor things left before I'll consider it 100% complete:

First, I need to clean up the electrical and electronics connections. Power comes from the fire-wall mounted junction box in the engine compartment, and I need to shorten up that wire and hide it under the carpet. I also need to shorten the leads that connect to the phone. I'm toying with the idea of combining the audio and control wiring, as the dock port supports audio out. But that will involve some very careful soldering which I'm not sure I'm ready to tackle.

Second, I need to do is fabricate a better mount. Right now I'm using a piece of aluminum bar stock bent to fit the original mounting brackets that were on the radio. But the bent aluminum is too flexible, allowing the radio to "wobble" like a bobble-head doll when taking bumps. Since there's a side-mounted bracket, I'll probably build something that mounts the radio to the kick panel. That will mean I need to reinforce the kick panel chip board, as the radio weighs a good six pounds.

The really neat thing about this is that I'm using an era (looking) accessory to play era music as I tool along to work each morning and home in the afternoons. A little Al Jolson, Rudy Vallee, and Guy Lombardo keep me in the 30's spirit even in the midst of 2011 traffic

 

[callcoy]

Dan;
I admire what you are doing to provide entertainment in your car, while keeping the car stock looking. I hope it turns out to your satisfaction, you have certainly given it much thought.