The inside of my '51 is nearly all stock except for the added on Chevy heater and some older style gauges. I wanted a CD player / FM radio but didn't want a black box with digital lights and no control knobs hanging under the dash. Also didn't want to take up space in the glove box. So, bought an ol' chrome Montgomery Wards 4 & 8 track tape player at a garage sale for $1. Then gutted it out and made the face hinged. Since the control knobs were attached to the mechanism inside they needed to be screwed on from the back of the face, to make the front appear stock. Then the Pioneer Supertuner slid inside. It was a tight fit and I had to grind a couple 'nubs' sticking out from the side of the case. On a funny note I had my friend over that saw the 8 track sitting on my workbench a couple weeks ago and wondered what I was doing with it. Told him it was going in my truck. He said "where ya gonna get tapes" I told him "I don't need any" Yesterday he came over and I turned it on and said "listen to the old 8 track" He says it sounds great and then takes a look with the reply "Hey wait a minute, there's no tape in that thing"
great idea,...now find some lame 8 track tape, and cut it and fit it in there, so it looks like an 8 track is playing.
That's a hell of an idea. If you could squeeze a few 4" round speakers in the back of the box, or something, you could have a whole self-contained system, without wires and speakers mounted in the cab. I like no clutter. Smart. Pete
Great Idea!!! I was trying to figure out what to do for a modern sound system in my 68 Galaxie convert. Thanks for the inspiration! I had the same idea as you ...doc... cut up an old 8 track and epoxy it to the front so it looks ike one is in the unit. This would have made a great article for "Tech Week"!
The whole backside is open and there's a few factory holes in the case. Also has about a 1/4" air gap above and below the CD player. I've given it the 24 hour 'acid test' sitting on the garage floor and nothing was any warmer than normal. Yea, I'm on the prowl for some Slim Whitman. I'll check Craigslist for some free ones.. No telling what could turn up there. The hinge was in my 'used hinge drawer' but I think it was from a mobile home (reversible). You could probably get something for a cabinet door that's even spring loaded. I slightly bent the hinge so it has some resistance to hold the face in any position and hold it closed. I had to trim down one side of the hinge to make it the same width as the 8 track face.
Thats a great ideal. Really cool. I bought a 8 track player for my 24 truck and found a few tapes but I like your idea a lot better then just listening to the old tapes. Thanks for the pics.
this is a neat idea but isn't having an eight track player in a '50s car just as bad as a cd player?? i could see in a camaro or corvette...
9 times outta 10 it's just a broken belt... I fixed one up for my Mustang and didn't have a belt that fit, so I just used a bigass rubber band as a temporary fix. Sold the car, kept the 8-track, still works! I have crates of tapes, go to secondhand stores and you can buy 'em by the gross for like a quarter. I found a big box of Johnny Cash, Elvis, Jerry Lee, etc. tapes for $2.00. Have a bunch of cool mid-70's stuff too. Sometime you gotta replace the foam in the tapes, if you push on it and it doesn't spring back into place it needs replaced.
That would be cool but lots of the music I like is obscure. I have thousands of MP3's and make my own 'road tunes' with 3 times the music on one CD that an 8 track will hold. 8 tracks came out in 1964... My add-on gauges are about the same era, so I can live with it. It's still better than having a black plastic digital box that somebody will break out your window to steal. If you want CD and FM capability what's the alternative that doesn't cost a few hundred bucks? If somebody bitches too much about it to me in person, I'll probably poke 'em in the eye, then escort them back to their GEO Metro, Honda Element or Scion.
Hey now, you can listen to your MP3 player through an 8-track player... No shittin'! They made 8-track to cassette adapters, get yourself one of those (I got mine off EBay, I think I paid a pretty hefty price of $10). I'm probably one of the 143 Americans that still has a dual cassette deck in their home theater, so I could transfer CD's easy... All you gotta do is get yerself one of the adapters, then get one of those cassette adapters with a headphone plug, and there ya go!
The Jalopy Journal
