Aftermarket stereos for Road Runners?

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taguy16

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Are the aftermarket stereos that are available worth getting for Road Runners? For my '73 there's only three available: two from Custom Autosound and one from Retro Sound. These are just AM/FM stereo radios, but the more expensive CA stereo has a CD controller built into it I believe to control an external CD player. My preference would be to find an original one that works well, but I just don't think this is realistic. I think any used radio is going to need some work done to it to make it work well, and the folks that advertise online that they do this charge a small fortune.

Right now I have an AM radio (that is out of the car) and just to see if it works I'm going to need to get an 8 ohm speaker (I believe) for about $50 and go to the trouble of hooking everything up to it, and then what's on AM radio nowadays that's worth listening to if by some stroke of luck it works? I hate to pay almost $200 for an aftermarket stereo and put it into a classic car like this just to get something that I know works but only has AM/FM stereo. Unfortunately the alternative seems to be to pay a kings ransom to either get a reproduction stereo, buy a used one somewhere and (probably) have to send it off to get it fixed up, or have FM added to the AM radio I have for the better part of $500. I don't need anything fancy: just something that I can play music with clearly and that doesn't look out of place in the car or hurt its resale value.

Thanks for any thoughts on this matter.
 
One way to keep factory look is to put your AM radio back in and put a blue tooth wireless speaker synced to a iPhone and put on Spotify and listen to any music you want. Place speaker under the seat. Just an idea, that’s what I did.
 
I guess you have checked out classic. Value of the car. If like me I don't plan on sell it so put what I wanted in it and made a new plate work by cutting it and fitting a pioneer AM/FM/CD player with all kind's of things like phone input for hand free and blue tooth. Watching what sell's on BJ and other auction's have noticed that people love retro mod's. They want the new items but love the old car's. Just my 2 cent's. Wish you luck on your choice. Russ.
 
taguy16 said:
Are the aftermarket stereos that are available worth getting for Road Runners? For my '73 there's only three available: two from Custom Autosound and one from Retro Sound. These are just AM/FM stereo radios, but the more expensive CA stereo has a CD controller built into it I believe to control an external CD player. My preference would be to find an original one that works well, but I just don't think this is realistic. I think any used radio is going to need some work done to it to make it work well, and the folks that advertise online that they do this charge a small fortune.

Right now I have an AM radio (that is out of the car) and just to see if it works I'm going to need to get an 8 ohm speaker (I believe) for about $50 and go to the trouble of hooking everything up to it, and then what's on AM radio nowadays that's worth listening to if by some stroke of luck it works? I hate to pay almost $200 for an aftermarket stereo and put it into a classic car like this just to get something that I know works but only has AM/FM stereo. Unfortunately the alternative seems to be to pay a kings ransom to either get a reproduction stereo, buy a used one somewhere and (probably) have to send it off to get it fixed up, or have FM added to the AM radio I have for the better part of $500. I don't need anything fancy: just something that I can play music with clearly and that doesn't look out of place in the car or hurt its resale value.

Thanks for any thoughts on this matter.
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Big Mo here and I have what you have. I also looked into getting my radio rebuilt but I really did not want to pay $400.00 or more. Then to top it off the numbers on the face are still the same, no FM numbers. Yes it is all updated for satellite but I am not paying for that as I will not be in the bird enough to pay for that. I am going to put my radio in hook up the power so the light comes on when I turn the lights on. It will not be hooked up to anything (light only). I bought a new radio that I am going to put in the trunk with wireless remote.
 
I have the factory AM/8 Track radio and had a guy from FBBO wire a plug to it and I ran it into the glove box. Now I can plug in my Ipod and play my music through the radio. It sounds great (when I can hear it over the pipes).
 
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Ranger said:
I have the factory AM/FM/8 Track radio and had a guy from FBBO wire a plug to it and I ran it into the glove box. Now I can plug in my Ipod and play my music through the radio. It sounds great (when I can hear it over the pipes).
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Ranger, Big Mo here. I thought about putting my radio in the glove box but I didn't know if there was enough room with the heater box in there.
 
1968 man said:
One way to keep factory look is to put your AM radio back in and put a blue tooth wireless speaker synced to a iPhone and put on Spotify and listen to any music you want. Place speaker under the seat. Just an idea, that’s what I did.
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That sounds like a good idea but I'm too old school to know where to begin doing that, and my preference is always to keep things as simple as possible. I do like listening to classic rock radio stations while I drive, however. It's nice to have a tape or CD player for long road trips, but it's always a hassle to have to keep track of all your tapes or CDs and shuffle them back and forth from the house to the car and back again, so sometimes I think it's more trouble than what it's worth. There's a lot more free airway FM stations than there used to be in this country, so it's not as hard as it used to be to find decent music to listen to on longer road trips (not that this car is going to be driven on long road trips).

So no one has experience with the Custom Autosound radios?
 
Big Mo said:
Ranger, Big Mo here. I thought about putting my radio in the glove box but I didn't know if there was enough room with the heater box in there.
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I think you are misunderstanding. I did not put the radio in the glove box, just the wire with a mini plug on it so I could plug in my Ipod. I have enough cord on it that I can leave the Ipod in the glove box or put it on the console or even the front seat.

P.S.
Just realized that I posted the wrong radio in post #8. It's an AM/8 track. I'll correct post #8.
 
Ranger said:
I think you are misunderstanding. I did not put the radio in the glove box, just the wire with a mini plug on it so I could plug in my Ipod. I have enough cord on it that I can leave the Ipod in the glove box or put it on the console or even the front seat.

P.S.
Just realized that I posted the wrong radio in post #8. It's an AM/8 track. I'll correct post #8.
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Yes I did Think you put the radio in the glove box and that is in line with my friend that builds rods for a living does that a lot of times on cars and he says you can lock most glove boxes. Big Mo.
 
Sorry for the delayed response Mo. Lost internet connection for 4 days.

Yes, the radio works. I have an aftermarket antenna and adapted the mount so it looks OEM except that I can drop it flush with the fender so I get no reception, thus no interference with the Ipod. Basically, I can use one or the other, but all I get on AM is a couple of Spanish stations, some talk radio and one Polish station.
:lol:
 
Ranger said:
Sorry for the delayed response Mo. Lost internet connection for 4 days.

Yes, the radio works. I have an aftermarket antenna and adapted the mount so it looks OEM except that I can drop it flush with the fender so I get no reception, thus no interference with the Ipod. Basically, I can use one or the other, but all I get on AM is a couple of Spanish stations, some talk radio and one Polish station.
:lol:
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Please correct me if I am wrong but back in the 60 was there a unit that plugged to the radio, you set the am on a set number and then you could get some FM stations.
 
hitachi-fm-stereo-tuner-converter_1_21ba64c0cd2642ad4561d0efa0376f62.jpg
 
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